🚨🏆VINI JR, Depressed and in pain over the outcome of the Balon D’or come.
As I analysed at the end of the club season, Vini was ahead, followed by Jude Bellingham. While both had quite similar stats, Vini was ahead because he finished the season significantly stronger, illuminating the biggest games that constituted the season finale. It had to take a truly exceptional individual performance (sort of a Messiesque one) from one of their close rivals at the Euro or Copa America to knock them off the perch.
Then came the Copa, and Vini’s Brazil took an early bath. That left cracks on his chances but still it needed someone at the Euro or Copa to permeate them and deal the blow. In both competitions, the teams, or to some extent their coaches, were the jewels in the crowns.
In the Euro in particular, where the Ballon d’Or winner came from, that Spain team had a handful of players that really stood out of Luis de la Fuente’s good bunch but their club performances had opened up a ditch too vast to fill. The stats reveal that RODRI wasn’t even among the best Spanish players on the road to glory. In none of their games did he get the highest ratings (see Fotmob) and even in midfield, Fabian Ruiz had a better tournament. In the all-decisive final game, Rodri even had to go off injured at half time. Yes, he won the Player of the Tournament award but we will have to look closer if that came due to his somewhat overall bigger portfolio or his actual performance at the tournament.
That said, is he a great player? Yes, I believe overall he’s the world’s best defensive midfielder, and someday we will look back at his career and say it deserved a Ballon d’Or. However, did he have a great Euro 2024 enough to eclipse the club season of Vini? No. For all his greatness, last season he didn’t quite provide the cut. It is not for nothing that he couldn’t get into the UEFA Champions League and EPL teams of the season.
If the Ballon d’Or just had to be given to an all-round successful player at club and country level, what then about Dani Carvajal?
Summarily, Vini Jr did not do himself justice with that Copa America performance, but there wasn’t enough from Rodri to beat him to this. Either way there’d have been question marks but Vini Jr would have been a more worthy winner.
Some reports from Spain (see COPE and El Chiringuito) suggest there may have been a conspiracy against Real Madrid. There is no proof of that yet but how bad will it be if anything of that sort cost Vini his Ballon d’Or.
