KEVIN MCCALLUM: Rodri won, Vinícius Júnior lost — so Real Madrid lost their minds

In June 2023, this was one of the top stories in the Daily News of Sri Lanka: “Trinity College won their annual Bradby Shield rugby match for the first time in 10 years as they beat Royal College 25-23 at Pallekele yesterday”.

Rugby is the second-most popular sport in Sri Lanka, just behind cricket. According to Wikipedia, “Rugby union in Sri Lanka has a history dating back to 1879. In 2012, according to International Rugby Board figures, there were over 160,000 registered rugby union players in Sri Lanka, making it the second-largest rugby-playing nation in Asia behind Japan.” Sri Lanka are now 41st out of the 113 nations on World Rugby’s men’s team rankings.

Football is Sri Lanka’s third-biggest sport, well down the pecking order. For three years, from 2017 to 2019, Hafiz Marikar, who wrote the above story on Trinity College and is now retired, was a voting judge on the Ballon d’Or. He is regarded as the most “infamous” of them all. For “infamous” read deluded.

In 2017 Marikar’s top five players were Harry Kane, Eden Hazard, Radamel Falcao, David de Gea and, top of the pile, Leonardo Bonucci, the Juventus and Italy defender. Cristiano Ronaldo won in 2017. The next year he went with Hazard as his top pick and chucked in Kane, Roberto Firmino, Paul Pogba and Ronaldo. Luka Modric won.

He ended his madness as a judge in 2019, when he opted for Trent Alexander-Arnold as the best player in the world. He added Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Antoine Griezmann, Robert Lewandowski and Marc-Andre Ter Stegen for the heck of it. 

Recognise excellence

He is not the only person. One of the “great Ballon d’Or traditions is uncovering the more left field voting patterns”, wrote The Athletic. “Last year the Cameroon representative did not vote for Erling Haaland nor Messi, the standout top two, but did put Andre Onana in his top five. And why not?”

Why not? Because that is not the way it is supposed to work. It is supposed to recognise excellence, the best player in the world, not reflect your bias and help your mates.

The criteria for choosing judges and for the Ballon d’Or voting have changed. There used to be one media representative from the more than 180 nations invited to take part by Football France, the organisers of the competition. In 2022, France Football reduced the list to the top 100 countries on the Fifa men’s world rankings (men) and the top 50 from the women’s world rankings (women).

Since 1995, when the awards were made global instead of the European player of the year, Mark Gleeson, the respected football broadcaster and journalist, has represented SA at the Ballon d’Or. On Thursday, he was a guest on Omni Sports Breakfast, the daily sports show I co-host with Mbalula Thinta on OmniAudio.Africa. 

He said that while there was no vetting process as such for the judges, they have been given specific criteria on how to choose their top five in each category. It works thus: The chosen media rep is sent a list of finalists to choose from. Formerly, the performance of a player in his overall career performance was given weight, which was how Lionel Messi beat Lewandowski in 2021. 

Sulk away

France Football specified that voters had to take into account three aspects: “Individual performance in [the] previous season (no longer by calendar year); team success during the previous season; player behaviour and fair play during the season.”

And, so they did for 2024 and Rodri won. Vinícius Júnior lost. Real Madrid lost their minds and threw a tantrum. Hell no, we won’t go, they said. And so they didn’t. Real are equal with Barcelona as the team with the most Ballon d’Or wins, 12 each. Sulk away.

Real’s act was a mark of disrespect for Rodri and for a category of player who is not a superstar, a big name nor a striker. Very few defenders have won the Ballon d’Or, if any since Frans Beckenbauer. Gleeson told us it was a breath of fresh air to have a player such as Rodri win, a man who is a metronome, the hub at the centre of everything his team does. 

There is a school of thought that Rodri should have won the Ballon d’Or last year but that he lacks “marketing”, says his teammate Álvaro Morata. Rodri’s reply? “But I don’t play football for that. [Morata] sometimes says: ‘Mate, you should ...’ but I understand football differently. And I know how it works so I don’t get frustrated. It doesn’t bother me but if one day someone wants to reward the work, that’s welcome.”

This week, the Ballon d’Or felt a little more real and worthy. Flawed, but worthy.