It's kind of sad that this is the reason for the closing of the argument, a sham award that somehow is still taken seriously by some. But it's good that it's finally over because, as some have said, the argument should have been closed much sooner.
Indeed. For anyone following football and not being Portuguese, the Ballon d’Or is not the deciding factor. It’s a popularity contest and Messi won it now not because of some divine justice that doesn’t exist, but because his rival doesn’t invest in managers and PR like Ronaldo does. If Juve had won the CL, we’d be seeing Ronaldo celebrating his sixth now.
Speaking as a Barça fan and someone who genuinely feels a huge debt of gratitude towards Messi for all the joy he’s given me over the years, the Ballon d’Or should be ignored. It’s a PR stunt and, since they couldn’t have given it to a Real Madrid player this time around, it went to Messi.
Tonight doesn’t make Messi any better historically speaking, but what I do find extremely amusing and poetic is that people started flocking into this thread calling for this discussion to be officially over due to a PR stunt of an award being given to the best player in the world for the first time since 2015. It is only right that this fabricated rivalry should officially close because the player that rode the PR machine missed out so badly that even a marketing project couldn’t do anything for him.
This doesn’t make Messi’s position any better than it was a month ago, but it does make me laugh.