There he is. The best football player in the world.

The dark hair, slight stubble and darting eyes. The barrel chest on a body less than 5ft 8in tall, wrapped tightly in the familiar white and blue stripes of the Argentinian national team.

There he stands, the world at his feet, the bloke who played five games in a weird kind of loan deal at West Ham in 2006 and is best remembered in a Liverpool shirt for losing the plot at Steve Bennett after being booked at Old Trafford.

Yes, Javier Mascherano is the best player in the world today. At least in the mind of England manager Roy Hodgson.

The voting for the Ballon D’Or was revealed earlier this week and one can only assume dear old Roy – a great friend to Kent’s non-league football scene and a good egg in the vein of the late, great Sir Bobby Robson, it must be said – was not aware his votes would be made public.

If not, how on earth can he explain the unfathomable decision not to include Ronaldo or Messi, clearly the two class acts on the global stage in the past 12 months, in his top three?

An interesting plot twist to this selection is that Mascherano pretty much blanked Roy when Hodgson was given the Liverpool job in 2010.

One of Roy’s first deeds that summer was to try and get hold of Javier after the World Cup, only for the Argentina man to send him to voicemail over-and-over and eventually push through a move to Barcelona that August.

Either this was Roy trying to woo Javier back onside or he mistakenly wrote his World XI into the wrong section of the form... Mascherano, Lahm, Neuer... certainly the cornerstone of a team that would be hard to beat. Is this really something that Roy values above all else?

If so, at least he has at least one kindred spirit in the 181 national team coaches, 182 captains and 181 journalists eligible to vote, Belarus coach Andrei Zygmantovich also voted for Masch – perhaps Roy should invite him to join him for dinner at St George’s Park later this month!

Roy has a free evening – he’s been forced to cancel dinner with the England squad as, staggeringly, they are ‘too busy’ to attend a tactical debrief of the friendly win over Scotland in November.

Need any further evidence that international football is... not so much the poor relation as the destitute step-child of the Premier League?

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I’ve seen a lot of fuss about the Big Bash cricket of late.

I’ve watched a bit this week, and while I was obviously drawn in by the glitz and glamour and something slightly exotic about something happening half a world away, I had one recurring thought... how has Darren Stevens not got a gig in this competition?

Clearly plenty of talented players on show, but more still are there on reputation alone and having seen the Kent all-rounder in action in the past few years it’s incredible that he’s able to join us watching far inferior T20 players plying their trade on the TV.