Payet gets Ballon d’Or nomination

Hammer Dimitri Payet has been nominated for the 2016 Ballon d’Or awards, he is only the forth West Ham player to have been nominated following Bobby Moore, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst.

Payet, who also won West Ham’s Hammer of the Year award and the Player of the Year gong at the London Football Awards last season as well as inclusion in the PFA team of the the year.

Payet  joins fellow Premier League stars Hugo Lloris, Sergio Aguero, Kevin de Bruyne, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Riyad Mahrez, Jamie Vardy and Paul Pogba on the Ballon d’Or nominees.

Lionel Messi, who has won the award five of the last seven years, has also been nominated while three-time winner Cristiano Ronaldo has made the cut after winning the Champions League with Real Madrid and Euro 2016 with his nation Portugal.

This will be the first year that the Ballon d’Or will go back to being given out just by French magazine France Football after Fifa ended its association with the award.

France Football has given the best player in the world the gong every year since 1956 but, for the last six years, they handed out a Fifa Ballon d’Or gong alongside world football’s governing body.