Chalk up one more trophy for CR7, this one the biggest and most important one of them all.

In a decision that surprised no one given the player’s outstanding performances over the past year (both domestically and in Europe), French magazine France Football has handed its prestigious Ballon d’Or award to Cristiano Ronaldo.

C-Ron was a clear winner, collecting 77 first-place votes from the 96 journalists judging the award (asked to choose their top 5 candidates in order, awarding between 1 and 5 points to each). It must also be noted that Ronaldo was cited by all 96 journalists, collecting a total of 446 points which placed him very far ahead of his rivals. Barcelona hitman Lionel Messi (third last year) finished second this time around with 281 points, followed by Liverpool’s Fernando Torres on 179 to complete the podium.

The 23-year-old Portuguese international led Manchester United to the Premier League and UEFA Champions League titles last term, netting some 42 goals along the way – an incredible feat for a player who predominately plays on the right flank. It is just the latest of many individual triumphs for the former Sporting Lisbon sensation, who was dubbed Player of the Year by the Football Writers’ Association and the Professional Footballers’ Association in 2006-07. He was recently also named the 2008 FIFPro World Player of the Year, and will only need the “FIFA World Player of the Year” crown to complete a pretty successful 2008.

Ronaldo becomes the 4^th Manchester United star to claim the Ballon d’Or, following in the footsteps of Denis Law (1964), Sir Bobby Charlton (1966) and George Best (1968), and the first Premier League player to win the award since Michael Owen in 2001.

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The Italian Chapter

As sadly pointed out by Gazzetta dello Sport, Italy have San Marino to thank this year. Had it not been for the 5 points assigned to Gianluigi Buffon by the San Marinese journalist (Marco Zunino), Italian players would have collected zero points in the 2008 Ballon d’Or rankings. Luca Toni received none.

In 53 Ballon d’Or editions Italy performed worse only 7 times, the latest on record being year 1992 (Franco Baresi collecting 3 points, and Paolo Maldini 1), when the Azzurri failed to qualify for the European Championship tournament. Only two times did Italian players collect zero points: in 1959 and 1985.

Serie A players didn’t do too well this year either, the highest placed being Kaka (8^th with 31 points), while Inter’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic was 9^th with 30. On the other hand, Serie A still leads the all-time records for highest number of winners: 20 players from Italy’s top-flight competition have won the Ballon d’Or so far, followed by the Spanish Liga (13), Bundesliga (9) and Premier League (6).

As far as team-ranking goes, Serie A is also still well-represented because Juventus (9) and AC Milan (8 winners) lead the charts of teams with the highest number of winners (Barcelona is tied for second with 8). Juventus also have the record for consecutive wins (4) through Paolo Rossi (1982) and Michel Platini’s hat-trick (1983-1986).

An interesting bit of information regards the number of voting members of this (and last year’s) edition. From the year of its inception (1956) to 2006 (Cannavaro’s triumph), the voting-body was composed strictly of European-based journalists (one for each UEFA-affiliated nation). Since last year, the jury expanded to 96 voters (one for each country who qualified at least once for the FIFA World Cup), resulting in the total number of votes to explode through the roof in the past two years.

Full Ballon d’Or 2008 Rankings
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Rank	Player	Nationality	Club	Points
1	Cristiano Ronaldo	Portugal	Man Utd	446
2	Lionel Messi	Argentina	Barcelona	281
3	Fernando Torres	Spain	Liverpool	179
4	Iker Casillas	Spain	Real Madrid	133
5	Xavi Hernandez	Spain	Barcelona	97
6	Andrei Arshavin	Russia	Zenit	64
7	David Villa	Spain	Valenica	55
8	Kaka	Brazil	AC Milan	31
9	Zlatan Ibrahimovic	Sweden	Inter Milan	30
10	Steven Gerrard	England	Liverpool	28
11	Marcos Senna	Spain	Villarreal	16
12	Emmanuel Adebayor	Togo	Arsenal	12
13	Wayne Rooney	England	Man Utd	11
14	Sergio Aguero	Argentina	Atl. Madrid	10
15	Frank Lampard	England	Chelsea	8
16	Franck Ribery	France	Bayern	7
17	Samuel Eto’o	Cameroon	Barcelona	6
18	Gianluigi Buffon	Italy	Juventus	5
19	Michael Ballack	Germany	Chelsea	4
	Cesc Fabregas	Spain	Arsenal
21	Didier Drogba	Côte d’Ivoire	Chelsea	3
	Sergio Ramos	Spain	Real Madrid
	Nemanja Vidic	Serbia	Man Utd
24	Edwin van der Sar	Netherlands	Manchester	2
	Ruud van Nistelrooy	Netherlands	Real Madrid
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Unrnk.	Karim Benzema	France	Lyon	/
	Pepe	Brazil	Real Madrid
	Luca Toni	Italy	Bayern
	Rafael van der Vaart	Netherlands	Real Madrid
	Yuri Zhirkov	Russia	CSKA Mosc.

Tags: Ballon d'Or, Ballon d'Or 2008, Cristiano Ronaldo, Fernando Torres, France Football, Gianlugi Buffon, Golden Ball, Golden Ball 2008, Kaká, Lionel Messi, Luca Toni, Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Posted in Player Profiles, World News |

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