Cristiano Ronaldo won the Golden Ball award for European Footballer of the Year yesterday, becoming the fourth Manchester United player to take the honor and the first since fellow winger George Best in 1968.
Ronaldo beat out Barcelona striker Lionel Messi, who was second place, while Liverpool forward Fernando Torres was third in the poll results announced overnight by France Football magazine.
Such is his extraordinary talent, Ronaldo takes his place among the greatest players to have graced European soccer despite the less savory aspects of his game.
The Portugal winger was runner-up to Kaka in the Ballon D’or last year and, after scoring an extraordinary 42 goals to help propel Manchester United to the Champions League and Premier League double, was untouchable in the race for this year’s award.
For all the diving, the theatrics, the exaggeration, the “what me?” shrugs and the Real Madrid transfer shenanigans, Ronaldo’s most important contribution to the game is his astounding array of talents.
There are many people who can perform eye-boggling acts of soccer trickery, but the closest most of them get to the professional game is a bit part in a halftime fizzy drink advertisement.
Ronaldo does it in the white heat of battle at the very highest level, against the most committed defenders, who take it personally when he makes mugs of them.
His tricks, more often than not, are less for show and more a means to an end as, once he has made his space, he wastes little time in delivering his crosses and incisive passes.
Only George Best, who also won his 1968 European player of the year award after helping United to win the European Cup and scoring in the final, combined that talent as a winger and provider who also had a greed for goals.
Ronaldo’s return last season of 42 in 49 games was astonishing. The haul contained goals of all sorts, dead-eye free kicks, calm one-on-one finishes, “right-place, right-time” tap-ins and a number of towering headers.
United manager Alex Ferguson said his heading ability should be compared to the true giants of the art such as Tommy Lawton and Tony Hateley and says critics of Ronaldo’s diving should look at the punishment he takes.
“All these great players over the years, the Maradonas, Cruyffs, Peles — they all took a kick. It didn’t deter them at all,” Ferguson said last week.
“Cristiano has a similar thing. He had an operation in the summer, which was the result of consistent tackling on him, but he’s naturally brave,” he said.
Also like those greats, his talents cross the club and country divide.
Ronaldo was also voted the best player in England by his peers, journalists and fans across all clubs for two seasons in a row, despite the uncomfortable memory of his sneaky role in Wayne Rooney’s red card at the 2006 World Cup.
He is a talent that puts thousands on the gate. Fathers want their sons to watch him and their wives and daughters have an eye for him too.
His critics say he has yet to become a big enough influence for Portugal, or even United, in the biggest games, but it was he who scored his team’s goal in the Champions League final against Chelsea last season.
Under a massive weight of expectation, he may not have shone in Euro 2008 but nobody could doubt his commitment in helping Portugal to the quarter-finals and it was Ronaldo who converted the shootout penalty to take them into the 2006 World Cup semis.
It is certainly a long and illustrious CV for a player who is still only 23 and there is room for many more glorious entries yet.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier