Cristiano Ronaldo wins Ballon d’Or with Lionel Messi a distant second

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jan/12/cristiano-ronaldo-ballon-dor-lionel-messi

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Cristiano Ronaldo has been awarded his third and least unexpected Ballon d’Or, with a year of individual overachievement that included 56 goals for Real Madrid earning him more than twice as many votes as Lionel Messi, his one-time Ballon-hogging nemesis, in the race for Fifa’s main individual honour.

In all Ronaldo, who first won the award in 2008 and was runner-up to Messi three times before winning again last year, took 37.66% of the votes, with Germany’s Manuel Neuer (15.72%) finishing just 0.04% behind Messi.

“It has been an incredible year. I would like to continue the work that I have done so far. I want to try to improve, to become better as each day goes by,” said Ronaldo. “I never thought that I would bring this trophy back home on three occasions and I want to win it again. I want to become one of the greatest players of all time.”

Votes were cast by the captains and coaches of every national side and a journalist from each country. Among the dissenting voices was that of England’s coach, Roy Hodgson, who selected neither Ronaldo nor Messi in his top three and had Javier Mascherano in first place. Every other British voter made Ronaldo their No1 except for Wales’s Ashley Williams and Chris Coleman, who perhaps unsurprisingly preferred Gareth Bale.

They were not alone in choosing team-mates: The German captain, Bastian Schweinsteiger, and Joachim Löw – named coach of the year after winning the World Cup – picked entirely Teutonic top threes. The Sweden coach, Erik Hamren, diplomatically favoured Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Holland’s Robin Van Persie and Guus Hiddink both thought Arjen Robben was best, while two of the three players and coaches to put James Rodriguez in first place were, like him, Colombian (the other was Noel Sanvicente, coach of Venezuela).

Ronaldo pointedly refused to vote for Messi, plumping instead for Sergio Ramos, Bale and Karim Benzema, who are all employed by Real. Messi similarly snubbed Ronaldo, choosing Ángel Di María, who plays alongside him for Argentina, ahead of Andrés Iniesta, his team-mate at Barcelona, and Mascherano, who plays with him for both club and country.

Though Ronaldo’s victory demonstrated that poor performances at last year’s World Cup could be easily forgotten, clearly the voters’ forgiveness would only stretch so far: Luis Suárez, whose brilliant displays for Liverpool made him the outstanding player of the 2013-14 Premier League season and earned a £75m summer transfer to Barça, but whose tournament in Brazil ended with a lengthy ban for biting Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini, received not a single vote of any description (The Guardian’s own list of 2014’s best players had him sixth).

Ronaldo’s main sponsor, Nike, immediately announced the creation of a commemorative boot, to be worn by the player this weekend, that is not only gold in colour but also features CR7, Ronaldo’s initials and shirt number, fashioned out of “micro-diamonds” because “the commitment to keep chipping away at something already impressive reminded Nike’s design team of Ronaldo’s work ethic”.