By: Mark Aguilar 🇸🇻
Football Italia (EPA-EFE/MOHAMMED BADRA)
Manchester City and Spain midfielder Rodri won the Ballon d’Or award on Monday.
The award honors the best player from the previous season.
Rodri was a crucial player in his team clinching the Premier League last season, as well as leading Spain in its EUROS 2024 victory this summer.
There is no doubt about his talent and ability to control the midfield whenever he is on the pitch. He is one of the best players in the world.
However, there is a player who arguably had a better season than him and deserved the Ballon d’Or more – Real Madrid’s Vinícius Júnior.
The morning of the Ballon d’Or ceremony, news leaked that Vinícius Jr. would not win the award, which prompted the entire Real Madrid team to skip the ceremony entirely. Despite their absence, manager Carlo Ancelotti won the Men’s Johan Cruyff Trophy for the best manager of the season. Jude Bellingham and Dani Carvajal also ranked highly in the Ballon d’Or rankings, earning third and fourth respectively. Real Madrid even won Men’s Club of the Year, with no representatives there to accept the award.
After news broke of Vinícius not winning the award, many assumed the winner would be Rodri. Comparing the two players and what they achieved last season, some could make arguments that either player deserved the award.
Last season, Vinícius Jr. scored 24 goals and provided nine assists for Real Madrid in all competitions. He won La Liga and the UEFA Champions League, arguably being their most important player.
In the summer, however, he had a disappointing Copa América campaign with Brazil, where they were eliminated in the quarter finals to Uruguay.
Manu Fernandez/AP
Rodri last season scored nine goals and provided 13 assists for Manchester City in all competitions. However, unlike Vinícius, he is a holding midfielder, so his main job isn’t to score goals or provide assists. His presence in the midfield is to control the flow of the game, which he is the best in the world at doing, but a job that is difficult to put into stats like a goalscorer.
With City, he won the Premier League, UEFA Super Cup, and FIFA Club World Cup. His crowning achievement came when he won the EUROS with Spain, where he was named the player of the tournament.
Both players had fantastic achievements last season that earned them a spot in the Ballon d’Or top 3 rankings, but why did France Football decide to award Rodri over Vinícius?
There are three main criteria that the 100 journalists who vote for the award have to consider: individual performances, decisive and impressive character; team performances and achievements, and class and fair play.
With these criteria, it could be argued that Rodri beat out Vinícius in the class and fair play category because of their opposite personalities and reputations.
Rodri is your dad’s favorite player. He tucks in his shirt in every game, he doesn’t have social media, he was a university student while being a professional soccer player, and he doesn’t have any tattoos. Rodri has a down-to-earth reputation off the pitch that resonates with many old-school people who tend to be the ones voting for this prize.
Vinícius represents the rebellious younger generation. He is much more of an outspoken person who has a large mainstream following. He is not afraid to speak his mind or express himself, which is looked down upon by many people in the sport.
Although still prestigious, the Ballon d’Or in recent years has become more of a popularity contest rather than awarding the best individual players over a season, as well as taking international tournaments too much into consideration.
We saw this last year when Lionel Messi won solely based on his World Cup performance and because people universally loved him and his crowning moment. Vinícius Jr. was the best and most important player last season, but because he had a disappointing Copa América and is liked less than Rodri, that could have lost him the win here.
Rodri’s Ballon d’Or win will be remembered more as an acknowledgment of his career and what he represents, similar to Luka Modrić’s win in 2018.
He doesn’t get on the score sheet, he does the thankless dirty work in midfield, and he is a symbol of Manchester City’s recent dominance in England, all while being humble about it.
The Ballon d’Or is becoming more of a symbolic award that accounts more for players’ narrative rather than their individual awards/achievements of the previous season.
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