Cristiano Ronaldo for Ballon d'Or?
After winning the European Championship with his national team, Portugal, people started talking about Ronaldo and the Ballon d'Or. It is inevitable, they said stating facts that are starting to irritate me. Without a doubt, Ronaldo is a great player and he deserves respect. His dedication to the purpose to be the best is one of a kind. His physical abilities are out of this world too. Yet, such associations with the Ballon d'Or are still daft.
One of the main arguments why Ronaldo deserves the Ballon d'Or was because he won the European Championship all by himself. Honestly, I don’t know how people say this. The coach and the whole team were supposed to rely mainly on their superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, Portugal was classified as a one-man team. The draw for the group stages seemed easy as Portugal faced Hungary, Iceland, and Austria. everyone expected three wins. The results proved wrong. After two draws in the first two games, Portugal were almost out of the Euros as they were trailing behind the result three times against Hungary. In the end, this led to a fortunate draw as they had to face easier opponents- Croatia, Poland and Wales.
I don’t want to sound like a hater, but the simple fact that in six out of seven games Portugal drew is enough to satisfy my opinion that Portugal did not deserve this title. Whenever I watched their games, I thought that this team is nowhere near the top teams of Spain, Germany, Italy and etc. I would have never guessed that this team could become European champions, based on the level the showed during the whole tournament. Obviously, this couldn’t be just luck, yet this was the thing Portugal most relied on. Focusing on Ronaldo’s performance during the championship, he had his few moments, but during most of the times he was mediocre. There were other people who helped him safe the team, such as Renato Sanches, Riquelme, Eder and etc. The one-man team statement seems unrealistic.
The second reason why Ronaldo deserves the Ballon d'Or was because he won the Champions league. This is quite an accomplishment, I must admit. But still, during the competition Ronaldo’s team Real Madrid faced opponents who couldn’t be classified as “strong”. The fans wanted to show statistics again. Ronaldo scored 16 goals. Everyone is thinking- Oh my gosh, that’s insane. Then, when you look at those statistics closely, five of those goals were against the giant club Malmo and another four goals were against Shakhtar (Donetsk). Classy teams, don’t you think. Moreover, during the final against Atletico, Ronaldo barely touched the ball and whenever that happened it led to absolutely nothing.
With all this said, I don’t think that winning the Ballon d'Or by Ronaldo is so definite. I would love to see him winning it, but there are other players like Griezmann and Messi who deserve it as much as him.