Franck Ribery has criticized the decision to crown Cristiano Ronaldo, the winner of the 2013 Ballon d’Or and feels the Real Madrid forward did not do as much as he did, in the year under review.
The Bayern Munich attacker, finished third behind Ronaldo and Messi, but feels he should have won the award ahead of the two players.
“I won everything I could win with Bayern and individually. Ronaldo on the other hand did not win anything,” Ribery told AZ.
“I am not sad that I missed out, but it does hurt a bit. I deserved to win the Ballon d’Or.
“It was clear that Ronaldo would win it. The voting deadline was extended by two weeks. This had never happened before. It wasn’t about football. It was a political decision.”
Ribery also slammed the selection of playerss in the FifPro World XI, wherejust three Bayern players made the cut against four Barcelona players.
“There are only three Bayern players in there. That’s madness. [Thomas] Muller deserves to be there, and so do [David] Alaba, [Bastian] Schweinsteiger and [Arjen] Robben. We won five titles and made history.
“And then there’s the absence of Borussia Dortmund players… Where are [Mario] Gotze and [Robert] Lewandowski? This is impossible.”
