The latest edition of the Ballon d’Or has seen fit to remember that football is still a collective game and has rewarded a team player par excellence such as Rodri. Accustomed to galas starring forwards who act as movie stars or rock musicians, functions often marked by an excessive cult of individualism and selfishness, it was surprising that the chosen one was a supportive athlete who enabled the triumph of his teammates and very especially from the strikers who monopolize personal distinctions or particular records, such as Haaland.
Rodri makes others better, whether he plays for the Spanish national team or Manchester City, having been equally helpful at Atlético and Villarreal. The continued success of Guardiola’s team is explained through Rodri. The former Barça coach usually remembers that his midfielder is the best in his position, a unique figure for his sense of the game and for being a complete footballer: “He has everything. “It was an incredible signing for City,” declared the coach who now misses Rodri.
Make the play, score the timingof the match and when necessary he approaches the area to finish, excellent in the mid-distance shot and author of the goal that last year gave the Champions League to the English champion after defeating Inter in the final of Istanbul 2023. A goal which has a unique value like the Ballon d’Or, a trophy that, on the other hand, Iniesta did not win when he scored the goal that won the World Cup in 2010 because at that time he was competing with fellow Barça players Xavi and the winner Messi. That debt with the national team has been compensated in some way now with Rodri.
Iniesta, like Rodri, was a midfielder, as was Luis Suárez Miramontes, the only Spaniard who until now had won the Ballon d’Or (1960), with the permission of Alexia and Aitana. The two winners also coincide in having been European champions with the national team and in achieving international success in foreign clubs after the Galician was transferred by Barça to Helenio Herrera’s Inter. Spain reached the continental and then world summit at the moment when the fury of the defenders and forwards was replaced by the wisdom of the media, midfielders or interiors, even when Puyol eliminated Germany in South Africa 2010.
No one doubts the nationality of Rodri, Premier League champion and best player in the Euro Cup, a title he celebrated with the cry of “Spanish Gibraltar”, an exclamation that earned him a one-match suspension from UEFA. That extemporaneous intervention seemed strange in a discreet person, far from noise, without enemies and an exemplary captain, not in need of honors or trophies like the one in Paris. No footballer has surely felt bad about Rodri’s victory, and hence the general stupefaction at Madrid’s attitude of distancing themselves from a very Spanish gala from start to finish because the winner was not the Brazilian Vinicius.
Although Rodri might also think that the trophy would go to Vinicius, he had decided to attend the ceremony out of respect for the organization, for the journalists who voted, for the players who were honored and for his sense of representation as a Spanish international for City. . The injured Rodri, whose absence will last until the end of the season, was simply willing to honor the Ballon d’Or without knowing that the chosen one was precisely Rodrigo Hernández Cascante. Rodri and 10 others play soccer.
