The Frenchman has found his feet at the Bernabeu and looks best equipped to challenge the likes of Mohamed Salah and Raphinha for the Golden Ball
The Ballon d’Or is bad for football. There is simply no way that an individual honour should have attained such importance within a team sport. The hope was that it would provoke less outrage after the end of the Lionel Messi-Cristiano Ronaldo rivalry responsible for its disproportionate level of popularity – but no such luck there.
Last year’s ceremony was, in fact, the most farcical and bewildering yet, with Real Madrid refusing to turn up after learning that their star winger Vincius Jr had been pipped to top spot on the podium by Rodri. The Manchester City and Spain midfielder was a most worthy winner, but Vinicius and his employers couldn’t even bring themselves to attend Rodri’s arguably overdue coronation as the best player in the world, making their b*tching and moaning about a lack of respect look like the height of unintentional irony.
It was a surprisingly pathetic display of petulance from a player that has earned so many admirers around the world for his at-times one-man fight against racism in Spain – but a predictably petty show of entitlement from the most conceited club in football.
Masters of Ballon d’Or campaigns
Because Madrid really do believe that the Ballon d’Or, much like the European Cup, effectively belongs to them. As Pascal Ferre, the former director of France Football, admitted back in 2022, Madrid are the masters of manipulating Ballon d’Or voters.
“Florentino Perez orchestrates the campaigns well,” he told the EFE Agency. “There are machines like Real Madrid that are very strong. Their intelligence is that they support a single player. For years it was Cristiano Ronaldo, then Karim Benzema. That prevents the votes from being dispersed. So, they know how this works. It’s no coincidence if it’s the club that has won it the most times.”
In that context, it will be interesting to see how Perez approaches this year’s Ballon d’Or vote, as Madrid made a mess of last year’s campaign and Vinicius has since been joined at Santiago Bernabeu by Kylian Mbappe, who has made no secret of his desire to win the trophy and is belatedly starting to look like a potential winner.
