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Vinicius Junior and his Real Madrid teammates did not travel to Paris for the Ballon d’Or ceremony on Monday after the team received news that Manchester City midfielder Rodri had received the award, sources told ESPN.
Vinicius, 24, was one of the leading candidates to win the 2024 men’s award after leading Real Madrid to the La Liga and Champions League double last season.
Sources told ESPN that the Brazilian international and his fellow Real Madrid nominees – Jude Bellingham, Dani Carvajal, Kylian Mbappé, Antonio Rudiger, and Federico Valverde, in addition to Andriy Lunin, nominated for the Best Goalkeeper Award, and Arda Guler, nominated for the Copa Trophy, and Carlo will not attend. Ancelotti, nominated for the Best Coach Award, the event organized by France Football magazine in cooperation with UEFA.
A Real Madrid source said that the club considers Vinicius not winning the award “unfair” and a “disgrace.” Not attending the ceremony is considered a protest in the form of a boycott of what another source in the club considered “historic theft.”
Vinicius scored 15 goals in La Liga last season, as well as six in the Champions League, including Real Madrid’s semi-final win over Bayern Munich and the final against Borussia Dortmund.
The feeling in Madrid in recent weeks has been that the striker is likely to win the award.
“I think he will win it,” Ancelotti said last week.
Vinicius was the first Brazilian to win the men’s Ballon d’Or since Kaka in 2007.
Lionel Messi has won the 2023 Ballon d’Or, his eighth, while Real Madrid’s Karim Benzema will take home the award in 2022.
Vinicius scored a hat-trick in the second half of Real Madrid’s 5-2 comeback match against Dortmund in the Champions League last week, before participating in the disappointing 4-0 defeat against Barcelona in the Champions League. classic on saturday.
In the summer, he scored twice for Brazil in the Copa America, both goals coming in a 4-1 win over Paraguay, but struggled in the tournament overall, as they were eliminated by Uruguay in the quarter-finals.
Rodri was a key figure in City’s 2023-24 Premier League title win, and then played a starring role for Spain on their run to win Euro 2024.
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