Twitter's Ballon d'Or predictor

The winner of the 2015 Ballon d'Or will be announced in Zurich early next week with the folks at Twitter crunching the numbers to predict just who will get the nod as the world's top footballer.

The three candidates for the 2015 Ballon d'Or - Neymar, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi

Twitter looked at Tweet mentions of the shortlisted candidates to see who would win the #BallondOr if success was determined by conversation on Twitter.

They also had a look at the FIFA Women’s World Player of the Year and both Men’s and Women’s World Coach of the year to see who would win those respective awards.

Not stopping there, Twitter analysed conversation to predict which goal would win the FIFA Puskás Award for goal of the year.

And finally, from 55 of the top-performing players in 2015 shortlisted, a Team of the Year was created based on mentions of players throughout the year.

So without further the winners based on Twitter mentions are:

FIFA Ballon d'Or

1) Lionel Messi

2) Cristiano Ronaldo (@Cristiano)

3) Neymar (@neymarjr)

FIFA Women's World Player of the Year

1) Carli Lloyd (@CarliLloyd)

2) Aya Miyama

3) Celia Sasic

Men's World Coach

1) Pep Guardiola

2) Luis Enrique

3) Jorge Sampaoli

Women's World Coach

1) Norio Sasaki

2) Jill Ellis

3) Mark Sampson (@Mark_Sampson)

FIFA Puskás Award (Goal of the Year)

1) Lionel Messi (FC Barcelona vs. Athletic Bilbao) - 30 May, 2015

2) Alessandro Florenzi (AS Roma vs. FC Barcelona) - 16 September, 2015

3) Wendell Lira (Atletico-GO vs. Goianesia) - 11 March, 2015

FIFA FIFpro World XI (Team of the Year)

* All Official Twitter Data accurate from 1 January - 31 December, 2015