2013 Ballon d’OR winner: Cristiano Ronaldo wins for second time with Ribery and Messi aggrieved

The 2013 Ballon d’Or award was won by Cristiano Ronaldo but the ceremony itself will go down in infamy as many people believed the award should have gone to French winger Frank Ribery. Join us as we discuss how Ronaldo won the coveted prize and ponder as to whether Ribery and indeed Lionel Messi could feel hard done at the outcome.

Ballon d’Or format

The Ballon d’Or is an annual football award presented to the best male player in the world. The format involves a voting process conducted by journalists, national team coaches and captains. They each submit a list of their top three players, assigning points to their choices.

The first-choice selection receives five points, the second choice receives three points, and the third choice receives one point. Once all the votes are collected and tallied, the player with the highest number of points is crowned the Ballon d’Or winner. The award takes into account performances across all competitions, including domestic leagues, international tournaments, and continental championships.

Who were the front runners?

Aside from Ronaldo and Ribery, the third player in the running for the Ballon d’Or was unsurprisingly Lionel Messi. Like Ronaldo, Messi had been in unstoppable form for his club side and had scored a not-too-shabby 60 goals in all competitions!

Was Ribery robbed?

From a statistics point of view (see tables below), it’s hard to argue with CR7’s output; the Portuguese scored as many goals as he played games and was nothing short of talismanic for a Real Madrid side that underperformed in all competitions that season. However, Goals and assists can be a more misleading stat than most realise.

Ribery had been the catalyst behind a Bayern Munich treble featuring the Champions League, DFB-Polkal and Bundesliga. A treble with the 3 biggest competitions they could possibly win.

Ronaldo on the other hand had failed to take home any silverware with Real Madrid that year, as they came 2nd in La Liga, lost in the Copa Del Rey Final to Atletico Madrid and crashed out of the Champions League in the Semi-Final to Dortmund.

Team achievements of course shouldn’t paint the whole picture of an individual award, but it has always played a big role historically. To win nothing but still win the Ballon d’Or when a main rival has won the treble would take some ridiculous output…

At first glance, Ronaldo’s stats look to tell the whole story of his win, but delving deeper you see that whilst he scored 66 goals in 56 games, he by far had the worst shot accuracy between them. It’s just as important to note, that Ronaldo’s main job is scoring goals, whilst Ribery was a winger, a position historically far more difficult to score goals from.

Ribery simply shot a lot less, picking his moments, whilst there’s a huge argument that Ronaldo’s over-insistence to shoot when it might not be a good decision should hamper his case. For every great goal scored there was a wayward/saveable shot in its place.

When we look into the numbers behind the goals, we see Ronaldo has almost as many shots off target as on target. Crucially he also has a far worse chance conversion rate. Again this can be in part explained by taking more shots and being on the end of more chances, but for a Ballon d’Or winning striker to have a lower chance conversion rate than both of his rivals isn’t a great look.

Whilst chance creation and shooting accuracy could still be debated in Ronaldo’s favour, Ribery’s creative impetus cant be argued against. 149 chances created, that’s 55 more than Ronaldo with 500 less minutes played than him.

There’s even a great point to be made about his dribbling stats, whilst technically the lowest number of successful dribbles at 45.57%, he attempted 1084, compared to Ronaldo only marginally better 46.03% in 252. That means Ribery was successful in 494 of his dribbles, whilst Cristiano Ronaldo was successful in just 116.

What about Messi?

Whilst the general consensus of fans seems to be that Ribery was the player who was most hard-done-by, there is a strong case that can be made for Messi, but it seems to read from the stats as ‘if not Ribery then Messi’. Ribery almost certainly should win off of achievements and stats in his respective role but Messi also has a strong case to finish above Ronaldo

Messi played significantly less time than his rivals, with over 1100 less minutes than Ronaldo which both explains his lesser numbers in many categories, but also hinders his chances.

In spite of this, he still notched up over 200 more passes than Ronaldo with much better accuracy, had better shooting and scored an impressive 42 goals. Between Messi and Ronaldo it’s certainly close, with good points to be made in both players’ favour, but in reality, if we look beyond just goals scored, it looks like Ribery was robbed of the 2013 Ballon d’Or.

Voting controversy

Cristiano Ronaldo 2013 key statistics

2013 Ballon d’Or top 20