Chapter 234: Ballon d'Or Awards, Lin Quan is the hot favorite?

On January 13, 2014, the 2013 FIFA Annual Awards Ceremony was held at the Zurich Opera House in Switzerland.

Compared with previous years, this year's Golden Globe Awards is full of controversy.

FIFA originally stipulated that the voting deadline for the Ballon d'Or was November 15, but five days after the voting deadline, FIFA suddenly announced that the voting deadline would be extended to November 29, and that those who had already voted would be allowed to modify their previous votes.

This practice of modifying the rules after the fact had never happened before, so it caused a lot of doubts from the outside world at the time.

Some people even think that this is a rule that FIFA modified specifically for Ronaldo.

The reason is simple. The day before FIFA announced this decision, Ronaldo performed a hat trick in the World Cup qualifying play-off against Sweden. He not only defeated Ibrahimovic in the head-to-head confrontation, but also led Portugal to advance to the World Cup finals.

Postponing the vote at this time and allowing the previous vote to be modified will definitely be beneficial to Ronaldo's election situation.

And before that, another incident happened in the football world - Blatter criticized Ronaldo.

At the end of October, FIFA President Blatter said at the Oxford Forum that he prefers Messi, believing that "Ronaldo is like a commander on the field and pays more attention to his hairstyle."

This statement caused a huge stir in the football world.

Blatter's words deeply angered Ronaldo and also offended Real Madrid.

C Ronaldo publicly announced that he would refuse to attend all FIFA activities, including the Ballon d'Or ceremony.

Real Madrid president Florentino called Blatter and asked him to publicly apologize to Ronaldo.

At the same time, fans of Ronaldo and celebrities from Real Madrid and Portugal have criticized Blatter, saying he should apologize for his words and deeds.

What's more, some people believe that there is something shady about FIFA's Ballon d'Or.

As the president of FIFA, Blatter publicly announced that he prefers Messi. It is hard to believe that the awarding of the Ballon d'Or is fair, especially since Messi and Sneijder had previously competed for the Ballon d'Or.

As the matter became more and more serious, various conspiracy theories emerged. Faced with huge public pressure, Blatter had to apologize to Ronaldo on the official Twitter and hoped to have a friendly dialogue with Ronaldo, but this request was decisively rejected by Ronaldo.

Therefore, many people believe that FIFA's sudden and temporary modification of the rules was just to show goodwill to Ronaldo and Real Madrid.

Extending the voting time is outrageous enough, but allowing the modification of votes that have already been cast is even more outrageous.

This approach naturally caused Ribery's strong dissatisfaction. According to all parties' expectations, Ribery's chances of winning the Golden Ball were very high.

After all, in a year without international competitions, he deserved the Golden Ball as the core of the Champions League championship team.

However, due to FIFA's intervention, Ribery's chances of winning the award have been greatly reduced.

Before the final result of the Ballon d'Or was announced, in the odds offered by bookmakers, Ribery's chances of winning had dropped to second place, behind Cristiano Ronaldo, and was even about to be caught up by third place Lin Quan.

Although Ribery was suppressed, Lin Quan emerged as a rising star.

FIFA temporarily modified the rules in order to create a back door for Ronaldo.

But during the period when Ronaldo was in great form, Lin Quan's performance in the league and the Champions League was also extremely impressive.

This greatly increased his chances of winning the award, even surpassing Messi, who missed many games due to injury, and successfully made the list of candidates for the final three players of this year's Golden Globe Award.

If we compare the statistics of Ronaldo and Lin Quan throughout 2013, Lin Quan's performance is not inferior to Ronaldo at all.

At the national team level, Lin Quan, as the core of the team, led Spain to 17 consecutive victories and won the Confederations Cup with a perfect record.

At the club level, he led Werder Bremen to win the German Cup and also won the Bundesliga Golden Boot.

In the Premier League, he led Manchester City to an unbeaten season and is far ahead of other competitors in the Premier League scorer list.

In the Champions League, Lin Quan scored in six consecutive games, breaking the historical record of the Champions League. He also caught up with Ronaldo in the total number of goals, and the two tied for the first place in the Champions League scorer list.

Compared with the two, Lin Quan is only slightly inferior to Ronaldo in terms of fame, but he is even ahead in other aspects.

So, after FIFA modified the voting rules, although Ronaldo's number of votes increased a lot, at the same time, Lin Quan also won the favor of many voters and his number of votes also skyrocketed.

This leaves the final suspense of the Ballon d'Or still there, as some of the votes that might have been cast for Ronaldo after the rules were changed were taken away by Lin Quan.

Although Ribery's lead was weakened, he was not necessarily caught up by Ronaldo.

As for the final result, it will be announced at the awards ceremony.

Therefore, although this year's Golden Globe Awards was full of shady dealings, it was the most tense one in recent years.

Although Ronaldo is leading in the odds offered by bookmakers, his advantage over Ribery and Lin Quan is not that big. Before the final results are announced, all three of them have a chance to win the prize.

Precisely because there was so much suspense about this year's Golden Globe Awards, the television ratings for this year's Golden Globe Awards were very high.

In countries such as Spain, Britain, Portugal, Germany and France, the ratings generally hit historical highs, breaking the ratings records of previous Golden Globe Awards ceremonies.

In Asia, Lin Quan's selection has greatly increased the attention paid to this year's Golden Globe Awards. The topic and discussion on platforms such as Tieba and Weibo are very high, and fans are staying up late to wait for the final results to be announced.

With such high attention, FIFA attaches great importance to this event.

They specially invited a large number of football celebrities to attend the award ceremony.

Zidane and Ballack were the first to appear and announced the 11-man list of the best team of 2013.

The eleven players are goalkeeper: Neuer.

Defenders: Lahm, Ramos, Thiago Silva, Alves.

Midfielders: Iniesta, Xavi, Ribery.

Forwards: Cristiano Ronaldo, Lin Quan, Messi.

The 11 award winners came on stage one after another and took a group photo after receiving their awards.

The forward trio of Cristiano Ronaldo, Lin Quan and Messi stood together.

Ronaldo was a head taller than them, so he stood out when he stood next to them.

Messi is the shortest among the three, four centimeters shorter than Lin Quan.

Standing next to the two of them, Messi felt a little unnatural.

A victim of FIFA's changes to the Ballon d'Or voting rules, Messi failed to make the top three candidates this year.

The two people around him were both selected, which made Messi a little embarrassed.

What's even more embarrassing is that at the moment the photographer took the photo, Lin Quan and Messi both noticed that Ronaldo next to them suddenly stood on tiptoe, allowing himself to jump up a bit higher.

Ronaldo, who is already a head taller than the other two, looks even taller in the still photo.

Compared with him, Lin Quan and Messi are like dwarfs.

Seeing Ronaldo's move, Lin Quan and Messi both showed surprised expressions on their faces, looked at each other and exchanged glances.

Messi subconsciously took a step towards Lin Quan, not wanting to be a foil for Ronaldo.

Lin Quan couldn't help but want to laugh. The president was really narcissistic. He wanted to be the most handsome guy in every photo.

Let’s not talk about the other positions of this year’s 11-man lineup, but this forward combination is definitely the strongest and most expensive forward combination in history.

Among other awards, the best coach award was given to the retired old man Heynckes. There was no suspense about this and everyone recognized this result.

The Puskas Award was presented to Lin Quan, who won the award ahead of Ibrahimovic and Neymar with his stunning overhead kick in the match against Chelsea.

Before he knew it, Lin Quan had completed his defense of the Puskas Award.

This is also the first player to successfully defend his title in this award. Lin Quan inadvertently set another record.

The final highlight came. After awarding the FIFA Honorary Golden Ball to the King of Football Pele, the King of Football did not leave the stage.

He is here today not only to receive the award, but also to be the finale presenter to announce the most important award - the Golden Globe Award!

The hostess handed Pele an envelope with the list of winners of the annual Golden Globe Awards.

After Bailey got the list, he took a look at it and then said, "Wow, what an unexpected result!"

As soon as he said this, there was a burst of discussion at the scene.

Unexpected result? Didn't Ronaldo win the award? The cameras immediately turned to the Portuguese. Ronaldo sat up straight with a serious expression on his face.

He originally refused to attend the Golden Globe Awards ceremony, but later came to the scene after being persuaded by Florentino.

But if he comes to the scene but fails to win the Golden Globe, what is the point of his coming?

Did he come here specifically to reconcile with Blatter? But he hadn't decided to forgive Blatter yet! Bailey saw that he had successfully aroused everyone's curiosity, so he slowly began to open the envelope.

"The player who won the 2013 Ballon d'Or is——"

The camera locked onto Ronaldo, Ribery and Lin Quan at the same time, and gave a shot of the three of them in the same frame.

In the camera, Ronaldo looked serious and Ribery looked a little nervous.

Only Lin Quan, as if it had nothing to do with him, was still chatting and laughing with Guardiola beside him, and seemed not to care about the result at all.

"This kid has a really good attitude!"

As an outsider, Messi is more relaxed and does not feel as nervous as before.

But he didn't expect that Lin Quan, who was selected for the first time as a candidate, would be so calm. When he was first selected for the final three, he was extremely nervous.

This made Messi couldn't help but sigh, this guy is really born with a big heart.

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…

"Pep, why don't you also switch jobs with Kroos and come to Manchester City!"

Lin Quan said to Guardiola half jokingly and half seriously.

Although Guardiola still has two and a half years left on his contract with Bayern, judging from Bayern's series of actions, they seriously lack respect for Guardiola.

The person who was promised to be bought was not bought, and the transfer fee was not paid.

During the winter break, they sold the players that Guardiola had clearly stated could not be sold. This kind of behavior, let alone towards Guardiola, even towards the tinkerer Ranieri, is extremely disrespectful to him.

Guardiola didn't want to talk about this topic, so he changed the subject: "You bastard, you still have the energy to talk about these things. Don't you care at all whether you won the award or not?"

Lin shrugged nonchalantly: "If I win, I'm lucky. If I lose, it's my fate. Besides, I'm just a runner-up. The winner will be either Ribery or Ronaldo, definitely not me!"

Guardiola nodded slightly. He was very satisfied that Lin Quan could face the reality and not have unrealistic fantasies.

After all, he is still young, and with his current performance, winning the Ballon d'Or is just around the corner.

Compared to Lin Quan, he is more worried about Ribery.

Ribery does not have the strong personal strength of the two great players and Lin Quan, and Bayern cannot win the Champions League every time.

The French national team he is in does not perform well in major tournaments, which means that this may be the only chance for Ribery to win the Ballon d'Or in his career.

This is really important to him! If Ribery doesn't win the award this time, he will definitely suffer a serious blow.

Bayern is now missing a key midfielder, and Ribery is the team's top player. If he fails to recover, then Bayern's second half of the season may be over.

"The winner of this year's Ballon d'Or is Cristiano Ronaldo!"

When he heard the result announced by Pele, Ronaldo first lowered his head. When he raised his head, the smile on his face could no longer be suppressed.

He went on stage after kissing his girlfriend Irina. After shaking hands with Blatter, Pele and other award presenters, Blatter personally handed the Golden Globe trophy to Ronaldo.

This handshake between the two of them wiped out all the previous grudges.

This is the second time that Ronaldo has won the Ballon d'Or after 2008. He also broke Messi's monopoly on the Ballon d'Or for four consecutive years.

In the competition for personal honors between the two superstars, Ronaldo finally regained 10%, no longer having to compete with one Ballon d'Or against the other's four Ballon d'Ors.

Last year, after Messi broke the historical record of goals scored in a natural year in football and won the Ballon d'Or for the fourth time in a row, a voice emerged in the football world: some fans who support Messi believe that there is no such thing as two great players.

Messi is in a class of his own. Ronaldo, who has only won one Ballon d'Or, is not qualified to be compared with Messi.

This statement has been recognized by many people in the football world, which makes Ronaldo feel tremendous pressure.

Now, this pressure has finally been reduced a little.

When giving his acceptance speech, Ronaldo burst into tears with excitement. After wiping his tears many times, he began to thank his teammates in the club and national team, his family and those who voted for him.

Seeing Ronaldo crying with excitement, there was warm applause for him at the scene, but there was one person who did not applaud.

The moment Pele announced that Ronaldo had won the award, Ribery's face turned pale and he stood still like a statue.

Someone stole his trophy! After the award ceremony, Ribery told reporters that he did not accept the result and would never accept it.

“I think I deserve this award, but there are too many off-field factors!”

Ribery's interview quickly put the organizer FIFA at the center of public opinion, and the voices of doubt on the Internet grew louder and louder.

France coach Didier Deschamps publicly expressed his support for Ribery, believing that the result of the Ballon d'Or was unfair to Ribery.

Some French fans were also very dissatisfied with the result and they went to the headquarters of France Football magazine to protest.

As a French magazine, it actually turned its elbow outward. French fans demanded that France Football end its cooperation with FIFA and conduct independent selection as before.

Faced with external doubts, FIFA chose to play dead.

We plan to delay it until the heat dies down, and the outside world will naturally stop paying attention to this matter.

However, at this moment, French reporters dug up explosive news.

They interviewed some people who participated in the vote, who said that there was a big discrepancy between their votes and the final results, so they suspected that their votes had been tampered with! For example, Fiji national team coach Buzzetti checked his voting results announced by FIFA.

His three votes were cast for Cristiano Ronaldo, Ribery and Lewandowski.

But Buzetti revealed that he is a fan of Messi and Lin Quan. He had always firmly cast the first vote for Messi, but he did not see Messi's name in the results announced by FIFA.

"Lewandowski? I didn't vote for him at all because I don't think he's up to the level of the first three players."

In response to the reporter's interview, Buzzetti expressed indignation.

Coincidentally, after Buzzetti came out to express his position, many people who participated in the vote said that the results announced by FIFA were different from their own voting results.

After these explosive revelations were revealed, the outside world's doubts became louder and louder, and FIFA could no longer play dead even if it wanted to.

So they quickly sent someone out to explain, saying that this situation might be the result of voting by the football associations of various countries.

Although the coach and captain are the ones who actually have the right to vote, the football associations in each country may directly vote on behalf of the coach and captain, resulting in inconsistencies in the voting order and even the list and the coach and captain's selection.

This explanation seemed reasonable, and some fans began to believe FIFA's explanation.

However, at this moment, Proud, a reporter from France Football, one of the organizers, stood up and said that in the internal vote, Ribery scored first.

This time, doubts were overwhelming, French fans were outraged, and Ribery even denounced FIFA on social media and in front of reporters.

In order to completely dispel the fans' suspicions, FIFA contacted France Football magazine, and the two sides jointly announced the voting results of the three candidates for the Golden Ball Award.

Cristiano Ronaldo, who came in first, got 1,305 points, and Ribery got 1,127 points, nearly 200 points less than Cristiano Ronaldo.

It can be said that Ribery's loss was not unfair at all! After FIFA announced the results, the outside world's doubts immediately dissipated a lot.

However, fans discovered something shocking:

The second place scorer was not Ribery, but Lin Quan!

He scored 1265 points, just 40 points away from C.

"Damn, Lin Huang almost snatched the Ballon d'Or from Cristiano Ronaldo!"

"It's a huge loss. If we had known the result earlier, we should have asked the Spanish Football Association and Manchester City officials to build momentum for Lin Huang and get some votes!"

"Who knew that Emperor Lin could get so many votes!"

"A narrow 40-point win, someone change Ronaldo's pants!"

(End of this chapter)