Real Madrid never turned up for the Ballon d’Or Gala in Paris earlier this week despite having several nominees in the squad across categories.
The club’s decision, as is common knowledge, was owing to Vinicius Jr not winning the award and was made after news of the same came out in the media in the hours building up to the ceremony.
Eventually, Manchester City’s Rodri took home the accolade with Vinicius finishing second and Los Blancos wasted no time in playing the victim card, blaming UEFA for the sudden change in result.
UEFA responds
As revealed by SPORT in a recent update, the apex body came out to give its statement against Real Madrid’s allegations earlier today and produced a statement that did not give any weightage to Los Blancos’ sentiments.
“If they say something like that, that says it all about them. And then he doesn’t deserve any more comment on our part,” they said.
Clearly, UEFA does not wish to have any more noise around the award or the criteria based on which it was given to the Premier League star.
From Real Madrid’s perspective, however, 2024 being the first year UEFA hands the Ballon d’Or in collaboration with France Football has to do with the result.
After all, they are aware that their relationship with the body is poor after the Super League saga.
The award, however, is not decided by either body but by journalists of the top 100 FIFA-ranked countries and it is thus more probable that the Brazilian lost simply because he lost some points to his teammates, splitting them with Jude Bellingham and Dani Carvajal.
