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On Monday, Argentina captain Lionel Messi won the Ballon d'Or for a record eighth time, ahead of Norway's Erling Haaland and France's Kylian Mbappe. To a standing ovation from the Chatelet Theater in Paris, the 36-year-old forward received the last medal in his career for the sensational success of the Albiceleste at the World Cup in Qatar and cemented his status as the greatest football player of our time. The America's Cup and the 2022 World Cup gold knocked Cristiano Ronaldo out of the main confrontation in sport No. 1 — Leo is now at the top, the 38-year-old Portuguese was left behind.
However, if not for the competition with Ronaldo, perhaps Messi would not have become such a block — the Argentine himself has admitted this more than once.
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«It was an incredible rivalry between two athletes. We inspired and made each other better, he, just like me, wants to win always and everywhere. I think it was a great period in the history of football. We remained at the top for 10-15 years, it is incredibly difficult, our rivalry will remain a wonderful memory for all those who followed us.» (L'Equipe)
Lionel Messi
Argentine footballer
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Statistics confirm the power of Leo and Cristiano’s many years of cutting. Since 2008, 13 out of 15 Ballons d'Or (to be clear: the most prestigious individual award in world football) have always gone to either Leo or his eternal opponent.
- Messi/2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2019, 2021, 2023
- Ronaldo/2008, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017
Hegemony was interrupted twice: in 2018, the award was taken by Croatian Luka Modric, who lit up the World Cup in Russia, and in 2022 — the irresistible Frenchman Karim Benzema. We also note that the ceremony was not held in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
However, to be fair, there should be fewer trophies from the Argentinean and the Portuguese in the collections of the Argentinean and the Portuguese. Below we recalled the years when the jury's choice raised many questions among both experts and fans.
2010
Absolute chaos. How could Leo outshine the world champions in the Spanish national team, Xavi and Andeas Iniesta, as well as the winner of the UEFA Champions League with Inter Milan, the vice world champion in the Dutch national team, Wesley Sneijder?
Perhaps the Ballon d'Or received in 2010 will remain the most controversial success in the career of the Argentine genius.
2012
Messi crossed the path of his Spanish Barcelona teammates again! Okay, breaking Gerd Müller's record for most goals (91) in one calendar year is cool. But Xavi and Iniesta scorched the football fields of Poland and Ukraine, winning the European Championship, the second Euro in a row.
Victory at the international level again turned out to be secondary, it was eliminated by individual success.
2013
Frenchman Franck Ribery won everything with Bayern, but neither the victory in the Champions League nor the final treble impressed the voters. The Ballon d'Or went to Ronaldo for the second time, and it still gnaws at the inconsolable Ribery.
What else should a footballer with a scar have done to outshine the Portuguese star? It’s unclear.
2014
A year later, KriRo's merits increased: his Real Madrid finally won the Decima (the long-awaited tenth victory in the Champions League), and the Portuguese himself became the tournament's top scorer with 17 goals. But Ronaldo failed at the 2014 World Cup… In Brazil, the German goalkeeper Manuel Neuer was spectacular, and with his performance at the world championship he simply rewrote the fundamentals of goalkeeping, revealing to the world the role of the goalkeeper-libero. The ideal was a goalkeeper who plays flawlessly with his feet and acts as the last defender outside his own penalty area.
Neuer deserved the Ballon d'Or as nobody else. But the world champion, like his Bayern teammate Ribery, was spoiled by Cristiano. And the legendary Lev Yashin remained the only goalkeeper in history to receive an honorary award.
2021
If France Football magazine had held the ceremony in 2020, Robert Lewandowski would have had no rivals. But COVID-19 intervened, and the Pole was left without the Golden Ball.
In 2021, he did not lower the bar: in addition to winning the Champions League, he broke Gerd Müller’s record for goals in a single season in the Bundesliga (in the 2020/21 season, Loew scored 41 goals in 29 matches) and a great start to the 2021/22 season. However, unfortunately for the striker and his fans, Leo came to the fore. The disastrous end of the affair with Barça and the unconvincing start at Paris Saint-Germain were quickly forgotten… After all, Messi broke the curse and, after four lost finals, won the America's Cup.
In general, a media boom from Argentine fairy tale at the «Maracana» simply blocked Robert's two-year merits.
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As we can see, the score in the confrontation could not have been 8-5, but 5-3. But the lack of criteria by which the new winner of the Ballon d'Or is determined is affecting. We presented the arguments above: you can win the World Cup or conquer all possible tournaments in a season — the hype around a person will immediately devalue your arguments. After all, journalists vote (previously captains and coaches of teams from the top 100 FIFA rankings joined the media), which means that both personal sympathy and hostility come into play… Sometimes it reaches the point of absurdity. What is the story worth when one of the representatives of an exotic country admitted that he really doesn’t know anyone except Messi and Ronaldo? Or a scandal with a journalist from the Comoros, who does not exist, like his publications?
One way or another, the Argentinean and the Portuguese left Europe — performances in the USA and Saudi Arabia leave the aging stars out of the future race for football «Oscar». This means that a new rivalry awaits us — Mbappe VS Holland. And the guys will have to try hard to outshine the great predecessors.
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“For me, the results that I have achieved are a great source of pride. I am grateful to everyone who helped me achieve these records. Our rivalry with Messi is over, it was a good confrontation, the audience liked it. We are both very good and have changed the history of football. We are respected all over the world, this is the most important thing. He goes his own way, I go mine.” (Record)
Cristiano Ronaldo
Portuguese footballer