Manchester City’s defeat to Liverpool in the 13th round of the Premier League marks a significant milestone in the Guardiola era: one of the longest, if not the longest, winless streaks for the team.
In my analysis, I see that injury problems are one of the main factors, and among these is the injury to Rodri, recently voted the best player in the world, in the 2024 Ballon d’Or award by France Football magazine.
I often say that the midfielder position, even without having the same glamour and attracting the same attention as an attacker, is the most important position in a soccer team. Rodri is an excellent midfielder and performs his defensive and offensive functions perfectly, being a key piece in the last English league titles, as well as the recent Champions League title in 2023.
However, a large part of the Brazilian media not only undervalued the midfielder’s achievement for the Manchester team but also used petty arguments to justify why the award should have gone to Vinícius Jr, a Real Madrid forward.
In 2022 I wrote Vinicius Jr: an Example of Determination, and in this post, I talked about how much pleasure it was to watch this player on the field and his disconcerting dribbles. At that time, the racist attacks he suffered from fans of other teams in the Spanish championship were already notorious. I cannot say if and how much this impacted his football, but everything that was pleasant to watch when he was playing for his team, today gives me a stomachache. Vinícius has become an aggressive, quarrelsome, disloyal, and disrespectful player. Every game there he is with his finger pointed at the referees and his opponents. And this behavior on the field, according to the vote of the journalists participating in the best player election, is what made him come in second place in the dispute.
For Brazilian soccer journalists and commentators, his political activism and combativeness against racism should be enough to consider him the best player of the season, ignoring the context that his performances for the Brazilian national team have been poor since the World Cup in Qatar, as well as his limitation as a soccer player to play in other positions for Real Madrid besides a left winger. To be fair, after Benzema’s departure, coach Ancelotti even started to give him more freedom to float in the middle at times, but he never managed to be the team’s main player. For example, in the 2023/2024 season, his teammate and newcomer Jude Bellingham played a much more important role. But deep down, this doesn’t matter, because in today’s world, many people see that we have to give the award to the player who is black, from a poor background, and a political activist.
One of the biggest examples of Rodri’s deserved Ballon d’Or is Manchester City’s losing streak, but as the fundamental role he played in the recent Spain National Team’s Euro victory in the middle of this year.
I hope to see him back on the field soon.