Ronaldo, the final surprise

Considered (rightly) as the most spectacular world championship in the world, if not the best, for several decades, the Premier
League is rarely highlighted during the Ballon d’Or. It must be said that Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have topped the list of awards for France Football for years playing at Barça and Real Madrid respectively. But “CR7” won the first of his five BOs under the colors of Manchester United, in 2008, a few months after his first Champions League.

Ronaldo is no longer the last Premier League player to be crowned Ballon d’Or. We have the new winner playing in England in the person of Rodri, the playing master of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, champion of England (and probably the best team on the Old Continent even if it did not win the LDC in 2024 unlike last year). Virgil van Dijk and Erling Haaland came in behind Lionel Messi in 2019 and 2023, while Jorginho and Kevin De Bruyne finished 3rd in 2021 and 2022.

Vinicius, the thunderclap

All of Madrid expected to see Vinicius bring the Ballon d’Or back to the Santiago Bernabéu this Monday, but a real thunderclap fell on the football world a few hours before the ceremony in Paris with the non-appearance of Real. The Brazilian winger will not be the 2024 Ballon d’Or after winning the Champions League with the Merengues by being voted best player in the competition. It was Rodri, voted best player of Euro 2024 during the coronation of the Spanish Seleccion, who finished at the top of the vote of the 100 international journalists solicited by France Football (according to the top 100 of the Fifa Ranking).

Rodrigo Hernandez Cascante, a native of Madrid trained at Atlético (then at Villarreal), thus becomes the 3rd Spanish player in history to win a Ballon d’Or after Alfredo Di Stefano in 1957 and 1959 (when he was Argentinian/Argentinian international before being naturalized Spanish) and Luis Suarez in 1960. An eternity then! The last Spaniard on the Ballon d’Or podium was Andrés Iniesta in 2012.