Mbappe leads Vini in Madrid’s internal Ballon d’Or race
Source:Â http://richportaltv.com
The Frenchman appears most prepared to compete for the Golden Ball against players like Mohamed Salah and Raphinha now that he has settled into the Bernabeu.
Football suffers from the Ballon d’Or. An individual honor just should not have gained this level of significance in a team sport.
After the Lionel Messi-Cristiano Ronaldo rivalry that caused its disproportionate level of popularity ended, it was hoped that there would be less outrage, but that did not work out.
When Real Madrid found out that Rodri had beaten their star winger Vinicius Jr. to the top of the podium, they refused to attend, making last year’s ceremony the most absurd and confusing yet.
Vinicius and his employers were unable to attend Rodri’s arguably long-overdue coronation as the world’s best player, even though the Manchester City and Spain midfielder was a deserving winner.
This made their b*tching and complaining about disrespect seem like the height of inadvertent 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.
Because, like the European Cup, Madrid genuinely feels that they are the rightful owners of the Ballon d’Or. In 2022, former France Football director Pascal Ferre acknowledged that Madrid is the expert at swaying Ballon d’Or voters.
He told the EFE Agency that “Florentino Perez orchestrates the campaigns well.”There are extremely powerful machines, such as Real Madrid.
The fact that they only back one player is an indication of their intelligence. Karim Benzema followed Cristiano Ronaldo for years. This stops the vote from being distributed.
They are aware of how this operates. If it is the team with the most victories, it is no accident.”
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.