Picture Credit: Twitter
Lionel Messi scripted history in Paris this week after lifting his 7th Ballon d'Or award, extending his lead over Cristiano Ronaldo who has 5 to his name. However, it seems like the Portuguese isn't very impressed by the outcome of the result this time around. Just a couple of days back, Ronaldo had slammed the Ballon d'Or chief Pascal Ferre over his comments and had termed him as "liar".
And after the announcement of awards for this year, CR7 has seemingly taken another indirect dig at Ballon d'Or, organizers and even Lionel Messi. The Argentine winning the award has come under lot of criticism as many people opined that Robert Lewandowski was robbed of another Ballon d'Or. While the debate of top 2 has been the talking point, Ronaldo finishing 6th has also upset a section of fans.
Messi won the award with 613 points to his name whereas Ronaldo had to settle for 6th position with only 178 points. The 36-year-old, who did not attend the ceremony, would have expectedly been upset with what happened in Paris and he presumably gave his opinion on the Ballon d'Or 2021 with a comment on the Instagram post of one of his fan pages.
Ronaldo finishing 6th didn't go down well with his fans
A page with username cr7.o_lendario came up with a post which had images of Cristiano Ronaldo's highlights of 2021. The caption started by mentioning the trophies that the Portuguese won this year - Coppa Italiano and Italian Super Cup. It also stated that Ronaldo was the top scorer for Juventus in the 2020-21 season and is currently the top scorer for Manchester United in the 2021-22 campaign.
"43 goals in the year, 6 goals in 5 games in this Champions League, all decisive and a guy who, regardless of age, continues to work miracles and is the guy who most impresses the world most often. They still put the guy in 6th… Do you really think that 5 guys did more than him in the year? Never,” it added.
The caption continued, "He could fight for this award calmly and the fight would be good with Lewandowski who in individual numbers was incredible and Bayern had a better season than Juventus and has been having a calmer season than United, but at the national selection level, for example, Cristiano was much better."
Did Ronaldo take an indirect dig at Messi and Ballon d'Or?
Had Ronaldo commented anything on the things mentioned above, it would have still been fine. But it was the next part of the post that made it quite a controversial one. The caption said, "And who does the prize go to? For Messi, who only won the Copa del Rey by Barcelona, he hasn’t scored a goal against Real Madrid since when Cristiano left, disappeared in the big games of the season, won the Copa America that was supposed to be every 4 years and do practically every year. He didn’t score in the final or in the semifinal. And he’s been having a weak season with PSG individually.”
“For Cristiano to win this prize he has to be 300% unquestionable. It’s no use scoring the most beautiful bike of the year, being champion of everything by the club, top scorer of everything and scoring a hat-trick in the World Cup, they still provide a way to take his prize. With Messi, it’s the other way round. He can do a low-key season, way below, they’ll always find a way to favour him and give him the prize," it concluded.
Considering the fact that the post was not just praising Cristiano Ronaldo, it was also demeaning Lionel Messi's 7th Ballon d'Or award, no one would have expected the Portuguese to have his say on it. However, something that stunned everyone was the fact that he not only liked the post but also commented, "Factos (Facts)" with an eye and thumbs-up emoji, suggesting that he agreed with what was mentioned in the caption.
The Instagram account on which the post had been made was deleted after Ronaldo's comment got viral on social media. It will be interesting to see if the footballer comes out and clarify the whole saga which transpired on Wednesday. Was it a mistake? Was the caption changed after his comment? Or was it absolutely intentional? Let's wait and watch!