BALLON D'OR
The ‘real reason’ why Vinicius Jr didn’t win the 2024 Ballon d’Or
The Brazilian winger missed out on the title of ‘best in the world’ to Man City’s Rodri.
Vinicius Jr, as you surely know, missed out on the Ballon d’Or last night to Rodri of Manchester City, the midfield lynchpin who has guided his side to unprecedented success both domestically and internationally, taking them to a level previously unseen in England.
However, the outrage of the apparent ‘robbery’, according to some, suffered by the Spanish club perhaps have a simple and understandable reason: there are a lot of good players in the world and Rodri is one of them.
And a lot of them are also at Real Madrid. The vote between the 15-time European champions, as they charged to the top of LaLiga and the Champions League last season, was spread out amongst Vini Jr, Toni Kroos, Jude Bellingham and Dani Carvajal, the standout performers for Carlo Ancelotti’s side.
This split in success on the field has led to the vote for Vini Jr being divided up amongst the aforementioned names, with the Englishman starting off his career at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu in a fairy-tale-like way, firing goals in from the start and getting assists for Vini and co. across the season.
Dani Carvajal, meanwhile, took his Real Madrid success one step further, winning the Euros with Spain and guiding his team from the right wing, making it his own in attack and defence. And Toni Kroos simply bossed the midfield for another season, probably ending on a 101% pass completion rate.
This team success that was spread throughout the team - whether Vini Jr was, in your opinion, ‘the best in the world’ or not - makes it even more unlikely that all 100 journalists would choose him as the undisputed star of Los Blancos.
Vinicius Jr got 24 goals; Bellingham got 23. However, the Englishman scored 4 more in the domestic competition (19) than Vinicius (15). He also managed more assists (6 vs 5). Carvajal‘s 7 goal contributions puts him up there as well, from right-back.
It‘s a tough question that got people wound up last night. I guess the answer is that it’s simply really hard to play elite football and there are lots of players who are good at doing so. Vini will get his chance again; perhaps he will take it next time.