“The Ballon d’Or should have gone to a Real Madrid player,” according to Florentino Pérez

“Rodri (the Ballon d’Or winner) is a great player, and from Madrid at that. It has nothing to do with him. He deserved a Ballon d’Or, but not this one, last year where he made the hat-trick (with Manchester City) and scored in the Champions League final. This should go to a Real Madrid player,” declared the Madrid president, taking responsibility for the decision to boycott the ceremony.

“Vinicius seemed to be the unanimous choice, but it could very well have been our captain, Dani Carvajal. Or even Jude Bellingham, Euro finalist and author of an exceptional season. It’s very difficult to explain,” he assured in front of more than a thousand “socios”.

The Spanish businessman, in open war with world Football authorities and support of the controversial European Super League project, accused UEFA, partner of France Football in organizing the ceremony for the first time this year, to have intervened in the award process:

“They changed the voting system (from 5 players to 10), also the number of points (from 6 to 15) that each journalist can give to each player. (…) Without the votes of four countries, Namibia, Uganda, Albania and Finland, Vinicius would have won the Ballon d’Or. They didn’t even give him a point!”, he regretted.

The influential Merengue president also asked the newspaper L’Equipe and France Football if it made “any sense” to “join up today with UEFA while European clubs are in the middle of a fight to obtain their freedom and free itself from the monopoly (of UEFA)”, and demanded that the Ballon d’Or be an “independent” trophy with more transparent criteria.