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Cristiano Ronaldo 2016
Cristiano RONALDO
Madrid’s main man…CR7 drid’s main man…CR7
CR7 number one again
Cristiano Ronaldo, a European champion for both club and country in 2016, is World Player of the Year.
A winner in 2008, 2013 and 2014, he has now matched the achievement of Lionel Messi by claiming the award for a record fourth time. The other winners in the 2016 World Soccer awards were first-time victors; Claudio Ranieri as Manager of the Year following his achievements with Leicester City, who were Team of the Year.
The World Player award is recognition of the most successful year of Ronaldo’s career. After scoring the winning penalty when Real Madrid beat city rivals Atletico in a shootout to win the Champions League with Real Madrid, he then captained Portugal to their first senior international success, at Euro 2016.
Some time after the end of the Euros final, Ronaldo stood bare-chested before his victorious international team-mates in the Stade de France dressing room and delivered a speech. “I am so very happy; happy, happy, happy, happy,” Ronaldo told them. “I could repeat it a hundred times.” It was genuine and emotional, and the fondness surrounding him is clear. It is a speech in which he called that day one of the happiest of his life, the most important moment. “I have already cried three or four times,” he admitted.
It was hardly surprising. He had waited a long time for this – and his
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country had waited even longer. At the end of an emotional night, Portugal had won a major tournament for the first time.
After 25 minutes of the final against France, he had been withdrawn with an injury. Watching from the touchline with an ice-pack strapped to his knee, he paraded up and down, desperately shouting and giving out instructions. Some said he had become the coach, playing as much of a part off the pitch as he had on it. From there he saw an extra-time goal win the Euros. He called it “the one trophy that was missing”, the most important trophy of all those he has won. “Forget the individual trophies, the Champions League, this one right here is the most important moment in my life.”
He had played in a final before, aged 19, but he and his Portugal team-mates were beaten, at home in Euro 2004, by Greece. Twelve years later, he was back.
Back in 2004, Ronaldo had just one winners’ medal in his career: the FA Cup, just secured with Manchester United. By the final of Euro 2016, he had won three Ballons d’Or, three Premier Leagues, one La Liga, two Copas del Rey and two Club World Cups. He’d just won the Champions League for the third time. He’d won it all... but not this, and that clearly mattered.
Ronaldo’s achievements are well
European champions… Portugal’s first-ever silverware
known, but they are worth repeating.
Top scorer in the Champions League four years in a row; the first player to score at four Euros; the tournament’s alltime joint-top scorer with Michel Platini. In his first season at Real Madrid he hit 33 goals. Since then, he has gone over 50 goals every season for six seasons. In seven years at the Bernabeu he has become the club’s all-time top scorer. At Real Madrid, that is, not some tin-pot team. It ’s not like the men he has left behind were nobodies: Raul, Di Stefano, Butragueno, Santillana, Hugo Sanchez...
Real Madrid’s president Florentino Perez calls him the “worthy successor of Alfredo Di Stefano and Puskas.”
The curious, contradictory thing is that 2016 may well have been Ronaldo’s most difficult year. Possibly even his worst –although there’s something in the word “worst” that sticks in the throat when applied to Ronaldo, and when applied to a season like the one he’s just had.
His “worst” blows pretty much everyone else’s best to bits. As Alvaro Morata put it: “We think he is from a different planet, but he is human.”
For so long, he hasn’t looked like it. But there was something a little odd about his year. His most difficult year
individually – the year in which for the first time he has not dominated at Madrid – has been his best collectively.
Ultimately, last season was a wonderful season. 2016 could hardly have ended better: Ronaldo is a double European champion, for club and country. Images and moments that can never be erased.
But here comes the debate. In La Liga, Luis Suarez outscored Ronaldo – the first player other than Messi or Ronaldo to be Pichichi in seven years. Barcelona won the double, not Madrid.
When Ronaldo struggled with injury at the end of the season, it was Gareth Bale who stepped up. And before that, some suggested that players like Luka Modric and Karim Benzema had produced better performances. Ronaldo was not bossing games, his evolution into something close to a number nine continuing.
There were lots of goals, of course, but less of the rest of his game. He was not flying past players any more; he went on fewer dribbles; fewer of his goals took the breath away. He “only ” scored goals, some said. Yeah, only.
In the Champions League final against Atletico, he was a peripheral figure; in the Euro final against France, he had to watch from the touchline.
Yet, they would never have got there without him, neither club nor country. A hat-trick in the quarter-finals of the Champions League saw Real overturn a first-leg deficit to knock out Wolfsburg. He netted twice v Roma the round before.
In France in the summer, he got three goals and three assists. There was that lovely flick against Hungary, and he it was who rose to head in against Wales.
Besides, the two successes could be seen as reward for everything Ronaldo has done not just in 2016 but before.
Relentlessly, consistently, endlessly. If 35 league goals, 16 Champions League goals, is seen as a bad season, that can only be because of how ridiculously good the others were. Almost every record Portugal and Madrid have is his now. It would have taken a cold heart not to feel for him when it seemed his moment had been taken away in Paris; the moment he had worked towards for so long.
Injuries have indeed become a factor recently. He is a player for whom physical condition has been vitally important; an athlete as well as a footballer.
At the end of last season Ronaldo admitted that maybe he needs to learn to “ration” himself. It came as a surprise: he now knows that determination to
always be out there might be detrimental. There are other clues, too. His tactical evolution – less ground covered, the area he occupies smaller but just as decisive – has been a reflection of reality but it is also a sign of his intelligence.
It may not always appear so, but he knows his limits and that may prolong his career, along with his ambition.
No, he was not perfect last year; no, his displays were not always as brilliant as in previous seasons, but it ended up being the best of all. He scored 51 goals and provided 15 assists on course to two European titles. He needed team-mates more than before, but that’s fine. “We did it together,” he had told them.
On the day his recent contract extension with Madrid was announced, one newspaper noted, not entirely unfairly, that it came at a “critical moment” from him. “Ronaldo is going through his worst era,” it said. If only because of his age, that was natural.
But “worst ” is relative and look how it had ended; two European titles, the happiest moment of his life. And he doesn’t intend to stop yet. Real Madrid’s next game was Atletico Madrid away. Ronaldo scored a hat-trick.
The Wor ld Player award is recognition of the most successful year of Ronaldo’s career...a European champion for club and country
Top 10 Players of 2016
Player Club Country Points
1) Cristiano Ronaldo Real Madrid Portugal 842 2) Lionel Messi Barcelona Argentina 712 3) Antoine Griezmann Atletico Madrid France 559 4) Luis Suarez Barcelona Uruguay 498 5) Gareth Bale Real Madrid Wales 497 6) Neymar Barcelona Brazil 405 7) Riyad Mahrez Leicester City Algeria 134 8) Robert Lewandowski Bayern Munich Poland 117 9) N’Golo Kante Leicester City/Chelsea France 93 10) Jamie Vardy Leicester City England 87
Euro 2016 Player of the Tournament…third-placed Antoine Griezmann
Other World Soccer Award winners 2016
Shock Premier League champs …Leicester City
TEAM OF THE YEAR: Leicester City
