Cristiano Ronaldo, I bet you think this column’s about you … | Andrew Anthony


The preening Portuguese beat the more humble Lionel Messi to yet another Fifa award last week but does he ever notice that football is a team game?

Last Monday the Best Fifa Football Awards were held in London – leading one to ask when can one expect the Worst Fifa Football Awards, featuring YouTube videos of missed sitters and theatrical simulation. All the legends were there: Diego Maradona, Ronaldo (the Brazilian one), Phillip Schofield. It was the “biggest night on planet football”, as the Sky presenter said, full of “excitement, glamour and gossip”, making it sound as though it were an overblown gathering of prima donnas on the red, sorry green, carpet. Which, on reflection, is an unerringly precise summary of the occasion.

The big event of the evening, if you leave aside Kasabian’s performance, was the Best Fifa Men’s Player award, which was previously the Fifa Ballon D’Or and before that the Fifa World Player of the Year and may next year, for all we know, be called the Fifa Sepp Blatter Memorial Self‑Aggrandisement Award.

Related: Cristiano Ronaldo and Lieke Martens take Fifa player-of-the-year awards

Ronaldo is a man of such transporting narcissism that he seems to produce children as vanity projects

Related: The good ship Lionel Messi feels too massive to be moved | Barney Ronay

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