POT

THE BALLON D'OR LOST ITS CREDIBILITY When Lionel Messi won four Ballon d'Ors in a row from 2009 to 2012, Cristiano Ronaldo never said the award had lost its credibility. When Messi was leading 4-1, despite Ronaldo being the first of the two to win it in 2008, he never said the award had lost its credibility. He fought harder. He wept on stage when he won it. He called it a dream. Even in this video, where Messi leads 4-2 in the last six, with lovers and haters finally acknowledging something so glaring that they couldn't deny it anymore - But history is important. Fast forward to 2018. Ronaldo had just tied Messi at 5-5. He had just won three Champions Leagues in a row. The only thing left for Messi to hold over him was the Ballon d'Or count. That night, in HD, live on television, they stopped him. They gave it to Luka Modric with the excuse of the World Cup and "something different." A sham reason they have never consistently applied. And what did they do after stopping him? They broke their own criteria to give Messi two more, in 2019 and 2021, and then again in 2023, just to make it look like they, not the pitch, control his destiny and his story. That is when he finally came out to say, "The Ballon d'Or has lost its credibility." Since then, it has remained like that. The award that made him cry tears of joy as a boy from Madeira is now an award he doesn't even attend. He saw the light. He stopped letting France Football write his story, and went back to writing it himself - with goals, with longevity, with 981+ goals. He used to cry to win it. Now he smiles without it.