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Cristiano Ronaldo Wins Golden Ball

Lionel Messi absolutely dominated the Golden Ball awards for the last 4 years, winning the prestigious honor – which is handed to the world’s best football player – every time. Messi’s Golden ball reign is over now though, as the trophy has finally landed in the possession of the player long deemed the best by a large segment of the international football world.
Cristiano Ronaldo scored 69 goals last year, for Real Madrid as well as for the Portuguese national squad. According to experts, the performance that really tilted the Golden Ball balance in his favor was a hat trick against Sweden in the World Cup playoffs, which was arguably the best run of his year.

Messi was once again very much a Golden Ball contender, but in the end he was edged out by the Portuguese, together with French winger Franck Ribery. Ribery helped his club, Bayern Munich, to a series of major titles in 2013.
The Golden Ball voting was done by the coaches and team captains of the 209 member countries of FIFA.
Ronaldo accepted the reward accompanied by his son, in tears as the much-coveted trophy was handed to him.

In addition to being named the best footballer of the year, Ronaldo was also included in the FIFA-FIFPro world all-star team, for which football players all over the world voted.

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Ronaldo had been favored to win the award before the actual ceremony, despite the fact that he had pondered boycotting the whole thing, after FIFA president Sepp Blatter said he preferred Messi over Ronaldo, because the latter had “spent too much time at the hairdresser”. The reason why Ronaldo has widely been considered better than Messi for quite some time now is that he has earned his stripes at several clubs in England, Spain and Portugal. Messi on the other hand , has always been with Barcelona, where he benefited from the services of the best midfield in the world made up of Andres Iniesta and Xavi.

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