Surprise surprise, Leo Messi has won the Ballon D’Or, crowning him the world’s best player, for the fourth year in a row.Messi is probably going to end up going down in history as the greatest player ever to kick a ball, but this year I don’t think he is as deserving of the award as maybe some others are.
CR7
I make no effort to hide the fact that I’m a massive fan of Cristiano Ronaldo, and I think he would have been the more deserving winner this year, especially if you look at FIFA’s history of giving the award to the player that has won major honours in a given year.
Kaka won in 2007, Ronaldo in 2008, Messi in 2009. Each year they had guided their teams to Champions League glory. Messi and Ronaldo could hardly be separated last year but Messi won La Liga with Barcelona which probably swung it.
Without getting into stats, last season the two players were neck and neck again. But Ronaldo won La Liga with his club Real Madrid. For me, Madrid winning the league is a greater achievement than Barca winning it.
Impact and Influence
I see the importance of a player to his club is a huge factor in determining how good they are. And I’d argue that Madrid would miss Ronaldo much more than Barca would miss Messi.
Barca have more world class players in their squad, and although Messi is head and shoulders above any of his team-mates in terms of quality, they could replace him with David Villa or Cesc Fabregas if they needed to and still beat most teams comfortably.
Ronaldo gets replaced by Gonzalo Higuain or maybe Jose Callejon if he doesn’t play. Don’t need to add anything to that do I?
Variety
The other big thing for me is that Ronaldo scores every type of goal you can think of. Right foot, left foot, headers, free kicks, 30 yard strikes, backheels. A lot of Messi’s goals – whilst very skillful – are really similar.
Ronaldo is an all round athlete. Whereas Messi’s talent is god-given, Ronaldo’s talent has had to be developed, worked on and sculpted from hard work and a relentless desire to be the best.
I’m not stupid enough to say that Messi isn’t an unbelievable player. Like I said he’ll go down as the greatest we’ve ever seen and I really want to get over to Spain so I can tell my grandkids I saw him play. But I wouldn’t have given him the Ballon D’Or this year. Especially in that rascal suit.
Honourable mentions have to go to Robin van Persie and Falcao, who both had stellar years in 2012.