Did Modric Really Deserve the Ballon d'Or?

For the past 10 years, football has been dominated by two individuals in Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, to the likes of which we've never seen before. However, this year in 2018, Luka Modric would be the very first person not named Ronaldo or Messi to win the award since Kaká in 2007. And naturally, it sparked a lot of controversy. Social media and news outlets are absolutely blowing up right now so I just had to make What's going on guys, it's ya boi Raymar back again for another video and today, we're gonna discuss if Luka Modric really deserved to win the Ballon d'Or. So before the Ballon d'Or ceremony started, I asked you guys who you thought would be the winner and the results were pretty close. Honestly, this is how I thought it would turn out. With Ronaldo winning, followed by Messi in second, and with Modric in third. Now, the Ballon d'Or has always had its fair share of controversies but not as big as this one. Essentially, the Ballon d'Or is an award given to the player who had the best individual performance for the past year. But a lot of times in the past, people would argue that the award was heavily influenced on team success, possibly even more so than individual performance. So to break it down, let's look at the top 5 finalists. Now, the results of the Ballon d'Or actually leaked earlier but nobody thought it was real including myself because it had Lionel Messi in 5th, which turned out to be 100% accurate so you could just imagine my shock when the actual ceremony went down. Okay, so let's take a look at Modric's individual stats last season. In La Liga alone, he scored a single goal and had 6 assists in 26 games for Real Madrid. In the Champions League, he would have 1 goal and 1 assist in 11 games. And for the Club World Cup, he would have 0 goals and 1 assist. So for club play in total, he would have 2 goals and 8 assists in 43 games. Now, some of you might say it's hard to quantify what he does on the pitch and fair enough. And I understand that he's a midfielder so you don't really expect him to score too much but that performance was hardly impressive at all and was pretty much the same as his previous years in Madrid. And I did watch a lot of Real Madrid games last year so I can say that he played well but didn't really have too much impact on the club's success that would be considered Ballon d'Or worthy. So the highlight for Modric would definitely be the World Cup in Russia. He would carry his country to its first ever final but would end up losing to France. During the tournament, he would score 2 goals and have 1 assist and Modric performed very well for his country. His value to his international team was much greater as he would be the talisman that led his country to the final and was awarded the Golden Ball for the tournament. So I won't deny his World Cup run was definitely Ballon d'Or worthy. So Modric honestly only had a Ballon d'Or worthy performance for 7 out of the 50 matches he would play last season. Alright so let's see how runner-up Cristiano Ronaldo did in comparison. For Real Madrid, he would score 26 goals and have 5 assists in 27 games with a goal scoring ratio of .96 goals a game. His Champions League performance would be even better with 15 goals and 3 assists in 13 games with a goal scoring ratio of 1.15 goals a game. And he would score 2 goals in 2 matches for the Club World Cup and 1 goal in the Supercopa. So for Club Play, Ronaldo would have a total of 44 goals and 8 assists in 44 games. I mean Ronaldo equaled Modric's assist output while scoring 12 times more goals. As for the World Cup run, Ronaldo in Portugal didn't make it past the group stage, but he did score 4 goals in the 4 matches he would play which included a hat trick against Spain. And we all know a hat trick in the World Cup is definitely not easy to pull off. Also, since Modric and Ronaldo were in the same club, they both won the Champions League and Ronaldo without a single doubt would have the Ballon d'Or worthy performance for the entire season across all competitions. Yet for some strange reason, whoever did the voting thought that a 7 game World Cup performance that wouldn't even be considered legendary would cause a 277 vote difference between Modric and Ronaldo. So you know, we're just gonna have to move on for now because this is absolutely ridiculous. Now, let's look at the other controversial topic. Lionel Messi ending up in 5th place. Like I said, when I saw the leaked results, I laughed and thought there was no way Messi would place 5th. And I'm not even a Messi fan, but I respect him completely and acknowledge his greatness. So we're gonna compare his numbers to Antoine Griezmann and Kylian Mbappe who were voted higher than him. For club performances, overall, Messi would have 45 goals and 18 assists in 54 games with a goal scoring ratio of .83. Antoine Griezmann would have 29 goals and 15 assists in 49 matches with a goal scoring ratio of .59. Mbappe would have 21 goals and 15 assists in 46 appearances with a goal scoring ratio of .46. In the World Cup, Messi would score 1 goal and have 2 assists in 4 appearances, while Griezmann would have 4 goals and 3 assists in 7 games. Mbappe would score the same amount of goals as Griezmann while only having 1 assist in the same amount of games. Yeah, Griezmann and Mbappe performed much better than Messi in the World Cup, but again, that's just a 7 game stretch. Everywhere else, Messi would perform much better than them, and it's not even close. Honestly, it seems like a lot of the voting for the Ballon d'Or, which is supposed to be an individual award, was influenced significantly by the World Cup. And remember, the tournament just lasted for 1 month out of the entire season. All in all, here's a final breakdown of all the stats so you guys can see for yourself. Now, this is based on every single game played for the player throughout the last season, which includes World Cup games that I put in the parentheses right there. And yes, a lot of you are probably going to mention again that the award isn't just based on stats, but how can you objectively say that for the past season as a whole, Mbappe and Griezmann performed individually better than Messi? That's absolutely ridiculous. Messi was only outperformed by the others when it came to the World Cup. You could even say that none of them did individually better than Ronaldo's hat trick, but France and Croatia just went all the way to the final and got all the hype. Because in no way, in no plane of existence did Modric, Griezmann, or Mbappe perform individually better than Ronaldo or Messi that year. And no, I'm not just saying that because they are and have been the best players in the world for a decade, but because it's absolute robbery. I honestly have no idea what France football was doing when they did the voting because it's insane. If it wasn't obvious enough, I don't think Modric should have won at all. And some of you will say, well, he played amazing in the World Cup and carried his country to their first ever World Cup final appearance and that he's a midfielder so his performance can't really be quantified. But what about in 2010 when Andres Iniesta, a top midfielder who scored the game-winning goal in stoppage time in the World Cup final to win his country's very first World Cup and played extremely well for his club winning the Champions League that year, only end up in second place. Why did they not care much for the World Cup then? We might as well just count club and international achievements because France football can't even decide the basis on which to judge a player's performance. Modric pretty much won the Ballon d'Or over Ronaldo for his exceptional seven-game World Cup run that led to his team getting second place while the other 43 games he played throughout that year were pretty average for his club. By that logic, Iniesta or Xavi should have won the Ballon d'Or in 2010 instead of Messi because they pretty much had identical club performances but actually won the World Cup trophy. I can't comprehend how Modric possibly beat Ronaldo to the Ballon d'Or by 277 votes when Ronaldo was the most dominant scorer for any club this season scoring 48 goals in 48 matches across all competitions, winning the Champions League and scoring a hat-trick in the World Cup all at the age of 33. I mean 4 goals and 8 assists in 50 matches? Come on, even Ronaldo had 8 assists. Equally, I don't know how you could say that Griezmann and Mbappe performed better than Messi throughout the entire year, which the award should be based on, just because they won the World Cup and performed better than him for a month. Alright, so looking at everything objectively, this year's Ballon d'Or should have been won by Ronaldo, followed by Messi at 2nd, then Mo Salah at 3rd, followed by Griezmann at 4th, then Modric at 5th because Ronaldo did have the best performance during his time on the pitch the whole season. Still, it's hard to deny that he did have the best season last year out of everyone else, both in terms of overall success and personal performance. I mean, for crying out loud, he's doing better this year than he did last year when he won the Ballon d'Or. Honestly, the number one reason why I believe Ronaldo and Messi weren't higher up on their Ballon d'Or placement is because of a phenomenon known as voter fatigue. This pretty much means that France football voters who, by the way, are the ones voting for the Ballon d'Or winner, get tired of seeing the same results over and over again for a long period of time or simply get tired of voting for the same person. I mean, they have been voting for either Messi or Ronaldo evenly for the past decade, so they probably just wanted to switch things up because they were tired of the same results, but those two clearly deserve the votes. And if there was anyone who knew that this whole thing would be an absolute mess, it would probably have been Neymar because he didn't even bother to show up to the ceremony. Instead, he just stayed home and streamed Call of Duty on Twitch, which is not a bad choice. But yeah, that's pretty much all I got for you guys today. Once I saw the Ballon d'Or results, I just knew that I had to make a video as soon as possible because it was an absolute robbery for Ronaldo and a massive disrespect for Messi, as well as an absolute war zone on social media. So I'm actually really curious to see what you guys think about this whole thing. Let me know who your top 3 or top 5 are and if you think Modric really did deserve the Ballon d'Or in the comments section below. As always, if you did enjoy, don't forget to leave a like as it honestly really does help support my channel. And if you're new and want to see more videos like this, make sure you're subscribed and hit the bell to join the notification squad so you don't miss out on anything. Thank you guys so much again for all the love and support. You guys have been absolutely amazing and I can't thank you enough. So with that being said, I'll see you in the next one.