Lionel Messi wins Europe's Ballon d'Or award

By Rappy
in The Sporting Arena

 Share

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

Rappy Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

Barcelona and Argentina striker Lionel Messi has been named European Footballer of the Year to win the prestigious Ballon d'Or award.

French magazine France Football said that Messi beat last year's winner Cristiano Ronaldo into second place by a massive margin - 473 points to 233.

Messi, 22, won the treble of Champions League, the Spanish championship and Spanish cup with Barcelona last season.

He also top-scored in the Champions League with nine goals.

One of them was in the defeat of Manchester United in the final in Rome.

Third and fourth place in the voting were Messi's Barcelona team-mates, the midfielders Xavi (170 points) and Iniesta (149).

Striker Samuel Eto'o, who left Barcelona for Inter Milan during the close-season, was fifth.

The highest-placed English player was Wayne Rooney, who was eighth.

'Fruitful year'

France Football said Messi was only seven points short of the maximum available from the 96 jurors.

The magazine quoted Messi as saying: "Honestly, I knew that I was among the favourites because Barcelona had a fruitful year in 2009.

"But I didn't expect to win with such a margin. The Golden Ball is very important to me. All the players who won it were great players, and some great players never won it."

He added: "I dedicate it to my family. They were always present when I needed them and sometimes felt even stronger emotions than me."

Barcelona picked up Messi at an early age from the Newells Old Boys youth team.

Four years ago, Argentine football legend Diego Maradona, who has since become the national team manager, said Messi would be the player to take over his mantle as national hero.

BBC

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

  • Posts

    • AMD 9070XT

      By Arceles · Posted

      AMD is supported out of the box in linux because of their open source driver. Nvidia does not. All my systems are amd and all of them work nicely on linux arch without doing anything.
    • Nearly 70% of Steam users now run Windows 11

      By WaltC · Posted

      Never had a problem with TPM and started using that many years ago in Win10. Through several motherboards and OS versions, it just does what it does without complaint. My games library doesn't even know it's there. Secure boot does a lot more than support anti-cheat, as it came along long before anti-cheat software. I've used it religiously since before I started using TPM, and I always liked it for being able to nullify virus contagions that try their best to come in underneath the firmware during boot, so that the OS doesn't see them, etc. That is its purpose, imo. I'll never understand why people who elect to use another OS feel compelled to run down Windows... I guess they need to do that to feel secure about their choices? I run Windows because it supports all the software (including games) natively that I want to buy, and I've never had to run down another OS to make me feel better about it. (Although it's certainly possible to do that, of course...) Win10 is on a ventilator atm, and Win11 is very close to being free, and I finally got to stop running StartAllBack as I moved to the Experimental/Dev channel and my 26300.8553 build supports the moveable taskbar and it's running fine at the top of the screen! Finally, my last major dislike of Win11 is being rectified! So, I'm not at all surprised to see Win11's share of the Steam survey hitting 70%.
    • AMD 9070XT

      By Mindovermaster · Posted

      I can answer about the Linux bit. I only used AMD GPUs. I currently have a 9060XT (8GB) that fits my needs, I'm not a gamer, so I don't need that much GDDR. But lately, NVIDIA has grown a lot in the recent years. Oh, the horrors of NVIDIA drivers not working. But they have been getting better. I know a lot of members onm here that are running cachyOS and other distros, and are fine with a 4090/5090 variants. Really, though, I would stick with AMD variants.
    • Microsoft is making Windows 11's context menus faster, simpler, and configurable

      By spacelordmaster · Posted

      Everything they say you can already do yourself on the registry by changing some things.
    • An actual cosmic "Eye of Sauron" had been looking straight at us all along

      By WaltC · Posted

      Artist's renderings are so much nicer to view than the real thing, don't you think?

  • Recent Achievements

    • Proficient
      Eric Biran went up a rank
      Proficient
    • Dedicated
      Conjor earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • Week One Done
      Windows Guy earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Dedicated
      Mark Spruce earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • Collaborator
      conkir earned a badge
      Collaborator

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      479
    2. 2
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      252
    3. 3
      Steven P.
      71
    4. 4
      +Edouard
      69
    5. 5
      FloatingFatMan
      68
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!