Further details from the hotly controversial vote for the 2024 men’s Ballon d’Or have revealed how close Real Madrid’s Vinicius Junior came to finishing above eventual champion Rodri.
Much to the disgust of Real Madrid, who boycotted the entire award ceremony in Paris last month, Manchester City’s talismanic midfielder Rodri was crowned the best male player of last season. The all-conquering Spaniard won the Premier League without appearing in a single defeat and was voted the Player of the Tournament as his nation lifted last summer’s European Championship.
Vinicius Junior was considered to be one of the favourites to win the award before news broke on the day of the ceremony that the Brazilian would miss out. Once it became clear that his clubmate Dani Carvajal was not the winner, Madrid ordered all of its represents to snub the event put on by UEFA and France Football.
Now that all involved parties have moved on, L’Equipe have threatened to reopen these wounds by revealing that Vinicius finished just 41 points behind Rodri in the vote for the men’s award.
One journalist from each of the 100 highest-ranked FIFA nations chooses ten players from a long list of 30 nominees to decide the most prestigious individual prize in football. The player ranked first receives 15 points, second place earns 12, then ten, eight, seven, five, four, three, two and finally one.
By this measure, a 41-point difference is minuscule (without quite breaking the all-time record). It would only have taken a handful of voters to select Vinicius in front of Rodri for the result to have swung in the Brazilian’s favour. For comparison, Lionel Messi finished 105 points above Erling Haaland in last year’s vote. When a Real Madrid representative did lift the golden ball in 2022, Karim Benzema collected 356 more points than second-place Sadio Mane.
In fact, more journalists included Vinicius Junior in their top ten (96) than Rodri (94).
Vinicius’ case for victory was arguably harmed by the talent of his Real Madrid teammates. Nine different players were ranked as the best in the world by at least one of the jurors – more than half of which played for the Spanish giants.
Jude Bellingham finished at the top of lists penned by five different voters, Dani Carvajal claimed a minor victory on four occasions and the freshly retired Toni Kroos was deemed to be the worthy Ballon d’Or winner by two journalists. Kylian Mbappe, Erling Haaland, Lautaro Martinez and Ademola Lookman all claimed one first-place ranking.
