Luka Modric slams Ballon d’Or absentees Ronaldo and Messi: “Trophies only have value when they get them”

Croatia and Real Madrid midfielder Luka Modric won the Ballon d’Or this year ahead of the usual suspects Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. However, he wasn’t happy that they didn’t even attend the ceremony.

Speaking to Sportske Novoski Modric was straight forward and honest in his assessment of the duo’s absence at the awards ceremony, going on to insinuate that they only didn’t attend because neither of them won the award.

That is logical, is it not?

It turns out these choices and trophies only have value when they get them. It is not fair to their playing colleagues, or to the voters who have nominated them for the past 10 years – nor for football or supporters.

But I repeat, everyone behaves the way they think they need to.

Modric, 33, is the first player not named Ronaldo or Messi since Kaka in 2007 to win the Ballon d’Or. However, instead of taking personal credit for breaking the duopoly, he chose to dedicate the award to other players who should have won but were overlooked in favour of one of the two generational greats, in an interview to BBC Sport.

Maybe in the past there are some players who could have won the Ballon d’Or like Xavi, Andres Iniesta or [Wesley] Sneijder but people finally now are looking at someone else.

This award is for all the players who probably deserved to win it and didn’t. It was a really special year for me

A straight shooter, both inside the football field and outside of it.