Cristiano Ronaldo has been awarded the Ballon d’Or award for 2013, beating rivals Lionel Messi and Franck Ribery to football’s top individual prize.
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The Real Madrid star enjoyed a career-best 2013, scoring 66 goals and providing 15 assists in 56 games across the course of the calendar year.
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The 28-year-old’s prodigious output had been bettered by Barca superstar Lionel Messi in the previous four match-ups between the pairing, but the Madrid star was a cut above in 2013.
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He single-handedly dragged Portugal to the World Cup, and was the main man yet again for Real Madrid.
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That was more than enough to hand Ronaldo the prestigious title for the second time in his career, after he scooped the award in 2008.
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Since then, Messi has won four – but after a season disrupted by injury, many felt Ronaldo’s toughest challenge would come from Bayern Munich winger Franck Ribery.
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The France international was the star player as Bayern won the Champions League, Bundesliga and the German Cup in a magnificent campaign.
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Ribery chipped in with 22 goals and 18 assists, but his candidacy was less about sheer weight of numbers.
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Many believed Ribery’s importance to such a dominant club side gave him a realistic shout of bagging the award – in a similar manner to how Fabio Cannavaro won the prize in 2006.
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But Ronaldo could not be stopped in 2013, and he could not be stopped here.
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More interesting though, will be next year’s award when a World Cup cycle comes into play.
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But for the next 12 months, Ronaldo can rightly call himself the best player in the world. And you cannot say that is not deserved.
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