For all the talk of Lionel Messi and Neymar producing beautiful football and inspiring their team to trophies, the winner of this year's Ballon d'Or should be the same as the winner of last year's - Cristiano Ronaldo.

Like Coldplay or Lewis Hamilton, Ronaldo has been so good for so long that it has become fashionable to knock him - for all his on-field achievements, the need to create a film about himself does not make him popular with the average fan.

But the fact remains, objectively, that aside from all the selfies and the celebrations, he remains a player at the peak of his powers, scoring at an unprecedented rate and carrying a once-great team on his back.

Cristiano Ronaldo has won the last two Ballon d'Ors - and he should be in line to make it three in a row

When it comes to individual achievements, there is no-one who has performed as well as Ronaldo in 2015

Despite a 'poor' start to this season, Ronaldo has 16 goals in 20 games, an almost unrivalled scoring record

Of the four front-runners, three of them - Luis Suarez, Neymar and Messi - play for one team.

It should not be any surprise that Barcelona, therefore, won the Champions League, and indeed the treble, a remarkable team achievement.

But the Ballon d'Or is not about a team. It is an individual award, and, as an individual, no-one comes close to Ronaldo. The man is a machine, producing pure, efficient goalscoring.

This season, we are told, he is off the pace, a shadow of his former self. Yet his 16 goals in 20 games (all competitions) are better than Lionel Messi's (9 in 13) and on a par with Neymar (16 in 19).

RONALDO, MESSI AND NEYMAR IN 2015 - THE VITAL STATISTICS Ronaldo (Real Madrid and Portugal): 48 goals in 51 games (0.94 goals/game) Messi (Barcelona and Argentina): 44 goals in 54 games (0.81 goals/game) Neymar (Barcelona and Brazil): 42 goals in 54 games (0.78 goals/game) Advertisement

Add in last term, and you can see that in 2015 neither Messi nor Neymar come close to the Portuguese star.

In La Liga alone, Ronaldo scored 48 times in 35 matches last season. That's five more goals than Messi managed, and more than double the number scored by either Neymar or Suarez.

His goals per game across all competitions for 2015 dwarf Messi and Neymar, and he is the only man close to a goal a game for the calendar year.

With Luis Suarez, Neymar and Lionel Messi, Barcelona have the best team in the world, but not individuals

Ronaldo has been forced to perform in a failing team, full of injuries, yet continues to bang in the goals

And as for the argument that he scores to the detriment of his own team - well he also provided 16 assists in the league last season - that's only two fewer than Messi, and more than Suarez or Neymar.

In other words, purely looking at goals scored and created, in 2015 Ronaldo is miles ahead of anyone.

Of course, there will be some who complain that Ronaldo's goals somehow 'don't count' - that too many of them are penalties or that it is somehow easy to score 'tap-ins'.

These people, I am sure, believe that they would score as many goals given a chance, carefully ignoring the fact that no-one in the history of the game has delivered goals at this rate for as long as Ronaldo has. You do not get lucky 48 times in a league season.

Then you have to factor in the players around him - Messi and Neymar are playing in probably the greatest team of all time, with service from Andres Iniesta and Ivan Rakitic, and the distracting runs of Luis Suarez.

Ronaldo is part of a barely-functioning Real Madrid side, in which Gareth Bale has spent time out injured, Karim Benzema is struggling on and off the pitch, and Rafa Benitez is on the brink of being sacked.

At the age of 30, Ronaldo is still at his peak, and scoring at a goal a game - no-one can compete with him

Yet still, under these circumstances, Ronaldo delivers goals at a rate, and a consistency, that can't be matched. Neymar has managed it for three months - Ronaldo has been doing it for years.

Take him back to last year, playing under a competent manager, with a team full of fit players, and Ronaldo's stats are astronomical.

In this country we like our champions to be humble, keep their head down, win with a quiet dignity that suggests, deep down, they wouldn't have minded too much if their opponent topped the podium.

Ronaldo is as far from that as you can be. He makes no secret of his desire to win every prize, individual and team. On the international stage he carries a nations hopes on his back, but does so with swagger, scoring half of Portugal's goals in Euro 2016 qualifying, and leading them to France.

The Portuguese star makes no secret of his love for individual awards, but that makes him no less deserving

We scorn him for his over the top celebrations, but Ronaldo, more than anyone else, continues to deliver

He celebrates every single goal as if it were the greatest achievement known to man, and demands, every game, to be the best and be recognised as such.

And that is what drives him to the astronomical heights he has reached. Some would call it unseemly to make a film about a team game, name it after yourself and gear it around an individual award.

But if that is what it takes to drive a player on to new records, year after year, then so be it. Because it works.

At the age of 30, Ronaldo is still banging in the goals, still leading the way at the biggest club in the world. In terms of team achievements, 2015 has been a poor year. In terms of individual output, he remains unrivalled.