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Lionel Messi with the Ballon d'Or
Photo:
FRANCK FIFE / AFP
Messi, Messi, Messi, Messi, Messi, Messi, Messi.
For the seventh time, the Argentine has received the award for the world's best footballer, the Ballon d'Or.
On Monday evening Lionel Messi was announced as this year's election winner, ahead of the runner-up, Robert Lewandowski, the star striker of Bayern Munich.
A decision that causes some amazement in Germany.
"Bild" calls the award to Messi a "scandalous election", and Lewandowski was even "betrayed".
»Cheek« and »Farce«, found »t-online« .de.
Lewandowski has scored countless goals, he scored FC Bayern in the championship, to win the DFB Cup, but above all in the final of the Champions League, where Munich defeated Paris and crowned themselves the best team on the continent - wait a minute!
That was 2020. In that year he would have been the logical election winner because both individual performance and team success came together.
But then the ceremony was canceled due to the corona pandemic.
Even now Lewandowski has had an outstanding month.
There were only four Bundesliga games in calendar year 2021 in which he did not score.
He surpassed Gerd Müller's goal scoring record, he became champion, he also scored in the Champions League.
But there Bayern failed in the quarter-finals to Paris, Lewandowski missed both games injured.
At the European Championships in the summer, Poland was thrown out in the preliminary round, without a win.
Just a supporting role
Awarding Lewandowski now, on behalf of the outstanding year 2020, would have been questionable.
Because he played a supporting role in some of the greatest moments of the football year.
One of those big moments, albeit one that had nothing to do with Lewandowski, was the Copa America. It was held at the same time as the European Championships in the summer and was therefore largely ignored in Europe. Argentina won the tournament, the team defeated Brazil in the Maracanã in the final, it was the nation's first major title since 1993. The Albiceleste scored twelve goals in seven games. Messi was directly involved in nine.
Anyone who watched him dribble and play magic passes felt how important this first title with Argentina must be to him.
The proof of this came with the final whistle of the final, the kneeling Messi, the teammates who were not celebrating their victory, but his who ran to him, crushing him.
A crying Messi, with happiness, with relief.
He was considered incomplete by many because he, the man from Maradona country, had won the Champions League and many other trophies, but never led the Argentines to a title.
That is over since this year.
The Ballon d'Or, chosen by international journalists, not just French by the way, is always a symbolic award.
It does not honor the objectively best footballer, but rather the one with the highest prestige.
Individual and collective performance over the course of the year, the player's class and overall career performance are assessed.
If Messi, perhaps the greatest footballer in history, reaches a goal in life at the age of 34, the long-awaited title with the national team, then it doesn't matter whether Lewandowski broke a Bundesliga record that was considered unbreakable.
To designate the Bayern attacker as number one in the world would have been a purely German view of football.
Messi is the logical winner of this choice.
Lewandowski is the logical second.
