Though Ronaldo’s victory demonstrated that poor performances at last year’s World Cup could be easily forgotten, clearly the voters’ forgiveness would only stretch so far: Luis Suárez, whose brilliant displays for Liverpool made him the outstanding player of the 2013-14 Premier League season and earned a £75m summer transfer to Barça, but whose tournament in Brazil ended with a lengthy ban for biting Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini, received not a single vote of any description Cristiano Ronaldo has been awarded his third and least unexpected Ballon d’Or, with a year of individual overachievement that included 56 goals for Real Madrid earning him more than twice as many votes as Lionel Messi, his one-time Ballon-hogging nemesis, in the race for Fifa’s main individual honour.
In all Ronaldo, who first won the award in 2008 and was runner-up to Messi three times before winning again last year, took 37.66% of the votes, with Germany’s Manuel Neuer (15.72%) finishing just 0.04% behind Messi.