The night in which a Spanish footballer won the Ballon d’Or again, 64 years after the only one of a man, that of Luis Suárez in 1960, and in which a Spanish woman, Aitana Bonmatí, raised her second consecutive, It also led to a tremendously rarefied night for Spanish football, with the Real Madrid team when knowing that the magazine France Footballnow in collaboration with UEFA, was not going to crown Vinicius.
The seduction caused by Spain’s game in the last Euro Cup received recognition at the Theater du Châtelet in Paris that the golden generation, that of the two Euro Cups and the World Cup, did not obtain. Rodrigo Hernández (Madrid, 28 years old), who took the stage on crutches after breaking the anterior cruciate ligament and meniscus in his right knee last month, won the Ballon d’Or: “It is not just a victory for me, but for football Spanish, and of so many players who deserved it and did not win it, like Xavi, Iniesta, Iker, Busi…”, he said. “It is a victory for Spanish football and above all for the figure of the midfielder. Our work is more obscure, but today it has come to light.”
The votes of 100 journalists from the respective countries that crowned him placed four other members of the team among the top 15: Carvajal (4), Lamine Yamal (8), Dani Olmo (13) and Nico Williams (15).
Lamine also won the Kopa, for best young person of the year, on a night that also recognized Jenni Hermoso’s fight for football to be a safe space for women with the Socrates award.
The gala once again crowned Aitana Bonmatí, 26, as the best player in the world, the fourth Ballon d’Or in a row for a Spanish soccer player, after the two of her Barça teammate Alexia Putellas: “This cannot be achieved alone. “I am very grateful and very lucky to have great players by my side who have made me continue to evolve and be better,” she said. And she remembered what fixes her to the earth despite touching the sky so often: “I am a people’s person. I still live in the same town where I was born, with my people. “It makes me feel like the same person I did 15 years ago, and that’s what makes me feel good and happy.” The podium for the female award was completed by her teammates Carol Graham Hansen and Salma Paralluelo.
It is normal that Barça won the award for best women’s club of the year. How Madrid took the men’s team. But there was no one in the theater to collect it, nor were Carlo Ancelotti there to receive the award for best coach or Kylian Mbappé, Gerd Müller as top scorer tied with Harry Kane.
The warning that Vinicius would not win provoked a radical reaction from Madrid, which on Monday morning dismantled the expedition it had planned to Paris. They believed that if the award was not for the Brazilian, and if winning the Euro Cup took precedence over the Champions League, as they understood was happening with Rodri, Dani Carvajal should be ahead, after lifting the two trophies and having also been chosen MVP in the final of Wembley. “It is obvious that the UEFA Ballon d’Or does not respect Real Madrid. And Real Madrid is not where it is not respected,” the club announced. Late on Monday, Vinicius wrote on his X (Twitter) account: “I will do it 10 times if necessary. “They are not prepared.”
Eu farei 10x is for precise. They are not prepared.
— Vini Jr. (@vinijr) October 28, 2024
The decision shook the atmosphere around the gala, which had been kept secret much longer than usual. Tradition dictated that France Football subjected the winner to a photo session and an interview days before the award, but this year it was not like that. Upon learning of Madrid’s decision, the organization told Efe that it considered the notorious sit-in by the club chaired by Florentino Pérez “incomprehensible.”
The absence on the day when Rodri could be crowned upset Luis de la Fuente: “It is not good for football that an entity like Real Madrid is not present at a gala of these characteristics,” said the coach.
Rodri, De la Fuente’s compass, felt the crush of having found his way of understanding football in the midst of the explosion of the golden age of Spanish football: “It coincided with the boom of tactical football, of Guardiola, of the Spanish team… “, he said a few years ago in an interview in EL PAÍS. That transformation led to three consecutive major titles: the 2008 and 2012 Euro Cups and the 2010 World Cup. When they lifted the first cup, the man from Madrid was 12 years old and was already involved in tactical debates with his coaches in the Atlético youth team. A decade later, already in the first team of the red and white club after his time at Villarreal, when he was faced with the crossroads of choosing what type of football he wanted to play, he opted precisely for Guardiola, and left behind Simeone and 70 million euros in the Metropolitan.
Also the football debates with the Argentine and some of his teammates. Rodrigo maintained that the team ran too much and explained that when he secured a pass he did so so that they could rest and prepare well for the next assault. “We play like this here,” they told him many times. And he wanted to play differently.
That is why he emigrated to Manchester in the summer of 2019, despite the fact that they tried to seduce him with the idea that Simeone could finish perfecting his defensive game. But he had already done that service. The previous season, at Villarreal, he had already been the player with the most recoveries in the League, and in the last season at Atlético, he led his team in that section. From a very young age, Rodri looked at football in a different way, looking for advantages in understanding the board: “I saw that if I was able to understand the game I would have a great advantage over my rivals, and even more so at those ages, where there is no so many concepts,” he explained in EL PAÍS.
So at the point where he decided the direction of the rest of his career, he went with Guardiola, with whom not everything was perfect from the beginning, as Laporte recalled in an interview in EL PAÍS in 2023: “I remember his first year, that I was half lost, and wanted to do too many things. And now it makes all things perfect. “He understands the game, he knows where the spaces are, he doesn’t lose a ball…”
The conversation occurred on the eve of winning the Nations League final with Spain. That night, Rodri pointed out victory as the first essential piece to be able to begin another cycle like the one that led him to choose his path: “Winning will be important to create a winning culture,” he said after being chosen MVP of the final. The midfielder was launched. Eight days before he had won the Champions League in Istanbul with City, scoring the winning goal (1-0), in a final in which he was also named MVP. That year he seemed even more destined to win the Ballon d’Or, but Messi had won the Qatar World Cup in December and won his eighth trophy.
It was this year, the new summit of Spanish football.
