Real Madrid may have set the tone — quite spectacularly — here but… Rodri winning the Ballon d’Or is really not controversial, is it?
If Vinicius Junior had won the award, as Madrid had long expected, it would have been well deserved. And as Madrid argued on Monday, having decided not to attend the ceremony in Paris, there was a great argument for Dani Carvajal to win it as well.
Whatever the result, these are highly subjective awards by their very nature; journalists from the top 100 FIFA-ranked nations get to cast their vote, and one of the great Ballon d’Or traditions is uncovering the more leftfield voting patterns.
Last year the Cameroon representative did not vote for Erling Haaland or Lionel Messi, the standout top two, but did put Andre Onana in his top five. And why not?
But the way that Madrid have reacted to the news that one of their boys has not won this year’s edition might make you think that the actual winner is one of those off-the-wall votes, or the result of some kind of shady string-pulling (like when the goalposts suddenly moved in 2021 and Lionel Messi, as brilliant as he has always been, won it instead of Robert Lewandowski).
To say that Madrid have thrown their toys out of the pram would be an understatement. Some rumours emerged on Sunday that Rodri might have edged it, but the front cover of Monday’s Marca still hailed Monday as the day that Vinicius would win the Ballon d’Or.
By Monday afternoon, though, the world had discovered that it would in fact be Rodri only via Madrid’s very public and very unashamed meltdown. They were quickly telling journalists that “the Ballon d’Or and UEFA does not respect us” and that the award “no longer exists for us”.
They say they will not go where they are not respected, so the expedition of 50 staff and players, including president Florentino Perez and club legend Emiliano Butragueno, was cancelled on the day of the gala. Real Madrid TV had scheduled special coverage, due to run for five hours, but that was canned, too.
Part of the reason they are so annoyed is that they believe that the award criteria dictate that Vinicius should be the winner and, if not, then it should be Carvajal.
The criteria, for anybody wondering, is this:
- Individual performance in the previous season
- Team success during the previous season
- Player behaviour and fair play during the season
And that, finally, brings us back to Rodri. Only the most one-eyed fan would read that criteria and believe it only applied to one club. There is a lot to admire about how Madrid regard their place in world football — let’s be honest, they are the biggest club on the planet and when they call themselves the kings of Europe, nobody can argue — but they do not own the sport nor do they have a divine right to its most prestigious awards. For outsiders, the idea that they would even suggest that UEFA does not respect them is preposterous.
Perhaps the importance of the Champions League to Madrid, and how inevitably they seem to win it, no matter how close to elimination they may be along the way, has clouded their judgment when it comes to this Ballon d’Or.
The Champions League has always been a big factor in who wins individual awards but international tournaments have always had a similar weighting and, as much as anything, while Vinicius has been important to Madrid’s successes, it is exactly the same for Rodri. He is actually integral to both City and Spain, whereas Vinicius has struggled at times for Brazil.
Considering Rodri was given a guard of honour on the pitch after Spain won the European Championship, and he was the centre of attention when the team celebrated with the trophy (in the exact same place where Madrid parade their trophies) you would think that the Spanish domestic champions might have noticed everything he has done when not in a City shirt.
Rodri won player of the tournament at the Euros as well as the Golden Ball at the Club World Cup, ironically a trophy that means more in Spain than it does in England. His influence for City is obvious both when he plays and when he does not. Last season, the period this Ballon d’Or is based on, the general rule was that when he played City won, and when he did not, they lost.
Three years ago, when Rodri was finding his feet in Manchester, Guardiola highlighted his consistency. “Holding midfielders need to be a seven or an eight (out of 10) all the time, he can’t be a three or a four because it would destroy the team.”
In the seasons since then, and particularly last season, he was registering nines or 10s in the vast majority of matches, and it is important to remember that, despite his own calls for a rest, he started 26 of City’s 29 matches from the beginning of 2024, with two of the games he missed coming in the FA Cup.
Of course, when Rodri plays he is the hub of everything City do. He had the most touches and passes in the entire league in 2023-24, and that brings its own differing demands. He needs to understand what to do in every situation: if he is pressed, which he often is, he will have to find the right escape route, and quickly. If he has more time, he needs to use it. He invariably does.
It is how he helps dictate the pace of City’s play. He does not just shuffle the ball around sideways, he forces the issue — at the right time, which is obviously vital for Pep Guardiola.
In the past two seasons, especially in 2023-24, he has become a real goal threat too — going by the Ballon d’Or criteria, he probably should have been higher up the list last year, given his winner in the Champions League final, although you cannot really say fairer than Messi pulling the strings in a World Cup victory.
With his physical presence and ability to break up the opposition’s attacks, he has become a genuine asset in every area of the pitch and every phase of the game, on and off the ball, and that was exactly the same for Spain, too.
When talking about Ballon d’Or candidates, there are never really going to be undeserving winners, and that means there will always be some very unlucky runners-up, but the issue with Madrid’s response to all this is that by letting their feelings be known globally, they have written off another very deserving candidate in a very public way.
A candidate, by the way, that they had reportedly been keen on signing, at least until he suffered a serious knee injury in September. Not turning up to the award is one thing but acting as if anybody outside of the club is so undeserved a winner that there is some kind of scandal going on is something else entirely. Regardless of whether they want to negotiate with him in the future or not, it is disrespectful.
It is also something which has impinged on the celebrations to some extent, with the Madrid boycott almost as much of a story as the winner itself. That is something that Madrid may come to regret in the future, and no doubt will be something that the classy Carlo Ancelotti will have to deal with gracefully.
Although it probably has done, all of this should not cloud the sense of pride that Rodri, City and Spain should feel about this entirely logical, and very well deserved, success.
(Top photo: Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)
