Lionel Messi said winning the Copa America with Argentina might have been the determining factor in him claiming the men’s Ballon d’Or prize for a seventh time after a turbulent year, as Spain’s Alexia Putellas took the women’s award.
Now 34, Messi pipped much-fancied rivals such as Robert Lewandowski and Karim Benzema to take the award in a glittering ceremony in Paris on Monday, the city he now calls home after leaving boyhood club Barcelona for Paris Saint-Germain in August.
Despite his tearful goodbye from Barcelona and his relatively underwhelming start to life in France, the jury of journalists from around the world rewarded him in particular for captaining Argentina to their first major international title since 1993.
Photo: Reuters
“Two years ago I thought I was coming into my final years, but here I am again back here,” said Messi, who won the last edition of the Ballon d’Or in 2019 before last year’s awards were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Messi also won in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2015.
“People were starting to ask me when I was going to retire, but now I am here in Paris and I am very happy,” he said at the Chatelet Theatre in central Paris, where he was joined by his wife, Antonella Roccuzzo, and their three children.
Photo: AFP
“I don’t know how many more years I have left, but I hope there will be many because I am really enjoying myself this year,” he said. “What I achieved with Argentina was a dream come true. I think I won this trophy thanks to what we did at the Copa America, so I dedicate it to my teammates.”
Argentina beat Brazil 1-0 in the final in Rio de Janeiro as Messi won a major title with his country for the first time.
He also scored 38 goals in 48 games in his final season with Barcelona and won the Copa del Rey.
However, Messi has played just 11 times and scored four goals for PSG since joining the French club, and there was a feeling that this year might see a different winner.
Poland striker Lewandowski would have been a shoe-in last year, when he scored 45 goals in 37 games for Bayern Munich, only for the awards to be canceled.
He ended last season with a remarkable 41 Bundesliga goals, but had to settle for second place in the voting for the Ballon d’Or, which is organized by France Football magazine and voted for by a panel of journalists from around the world.
Lewandowski instead was given a consolation prize for the year’s best goal-scorer and received glowing praise from Messi.
“I wanted to say to Robert that it was an honor to go up against him. He deserved to win it last year,” Messi said.
Midfielder Jorginho, who won the UEFA Champions League with Chelsea and UEFA Euro 2020 with Italy, came third, followed by Real Madrid’s Karim Benzema and another Chelsea player, N’Golo Kante.
Five-time winner Cristiano Ronaldo came sixth. He was absent from the ceremony.
Between them, Messi and Ronaldo have won 12 of the last 13 editions of the Ballon d’Or with the exception coming in 2018 when Luka Modric claimed the prize.
This is just the third year that a women’s Ballon d’Or has been awarded, with Putellas following in the footsteps of Norway’s Ada Hegerberg, who won in 2018, and the US’ 2019 World Cup superstar Megan Rapinoe.
Spain international Putellas, 27, captained Barcelona to victory in this year’s UEFA Women’s Champions League, scoring a penalty in the final as her side hammered Chelsea 4-0.
She also won a Spanish league and cup double with Barca, the club she joined as a teenager in 2012 and who are fast becoming the dominant force in the women’s game.
Her Barcelona and Spain teammate Jennifer Hermoso was second, with Sam Kerr of Chelsea and Australia coming in third.
“I am sure I won’t be the last Barcelona player to win the prize. This is just the beginning,” said Putellas, who in August was named player of the year by European soccer’s governing body UEFA.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB