It did not matter that the voting went
mostly as expected; Cristiano Ronaldo cried anyway.
Ronaldo, the star forward for Portugal and Real Madrid, broke
down in tears on Monday night after being named FIFA’s world player of the
year. He beat the Barcelona
maestro Lionel Messi, who won the award the previous four years, and Franck
Ribéry, the indomitable French midfielder for Bayern Munich.
Ronaldo, who scored 66 goals in 56 games last year, did
not win a team trophy (Ribéry won five with Munich), but he did lead his
national team to a place in the World Cup with a memorable performance against
Sweden in the European playoffs. That star turn, in which Ronaldo scored all
four of Portugal’s goals in the two-leg matchup, came — coincidentally — just
as FIFA extended the voting period for the year-end award, citing an unusually
low response rate in the balloting.
That extension surely helped, though considering
Ronaldo’s productive scoring, as well as Messi’s injury-plagued season and
Ribéry’s lack of gaudy statistics, his victory in the
voting of national team coaches and captains and select journalists was largely expected. Ronaldo received 1,365 points, Messi 1,205 and Ribéry 1,127
No comments:
Post a Comment