Rodri's Ballon d'Or is a win for team players and unsung heroes

Editor’s note: This article, originally published on Oct. 25, has been updated to reflect the result of Monday’s Ballon d’Or ceremony.

Can the ultimate team player ever hope to win the Ballon d’Or, the most prized individual award in football? That was the question being asked of Rodri, the Manchester City and Spain midfielder, and we got the answer when he lifted the 2024 Ballon d’Or at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris on Monday.

While the award is decided by the votes of a panel of journalists from the top 100 ranked nations in the FIFA Men’s Ranking, with the candidates drawn from a 30-player shortlist, the 2024 award came down to the claims of two players — Rodri, and Real Madrid and Brazil forward Vinícius Júnior (who did not travel to Paris after finding out that he would not win).

The race for the 2024 Ballon d’Or is football’s version of the immovable object against the irresistible force — the defensive brilliance and awareness of deep-lying midfielder Rodri against the goals, pace and creativity of Vinícius. With Rodri ruled out for the rest of this season due to a cruciate ligament injury sustained last month, and Vinícius emphasising his claim with a stunning Champions League hat trick against Borussia Dortmund last week, the odds seemed stacked against Rodri in his attempt to become the first defensive player since Fabio Cannavaro won the Ballon d’Or in 2006 after leading Italy to World Cup glory.

Cannavaro’s success was the first non-forward since Germany defender/midfielder Matthias Sammer won the award in 1996, again after helping his national team to success at Euro ’96, while only Germany defender Franz Beckenbauer (1972 and 1976) and Russia goalkeeper Lev Yashin (1963) had previously denied attacking players the Ballon d’Or since it was first awarded in 1956.

So history was not on Rodri’s side and neither was current form or fitness, but the 28-year-old was a Premier League winner with City last season — 12 months after his goal in the Champions League final win against Inter Milan sealed the club’s Treble — and he was also named as Euro 2024 Player of the Tournament after helping Spain to success in Germany this summer. He is the player who has forgotten how it feels to lose in the Premier League, with his recent injury halting his run of 52 games without defeat in the competition, dating back to Feb. 2023.

Regardless of whether he was fit or not heading into Monday’s Ballon d’Or ceremony, people would still wonder if Rodri could buck the trend with football’s most prestigious individual award.

“I really think there’s a lot of marketing involved,” Rodri told ESPN when asked about the Ballon d’Or in an exclusive interview last month. “But how it works when they give you the cards in a game, you just have to play with these cards — you cannot say ‘I would like to play another game.’

“No, this is what it is. We all know how it works and that’s why it’s something that doesn’t frustrate me. I hope that sometimes in the next 10 years we have one or two players in my position, or different position, that people can value what they do on the pitch. There’s great players on the defensive side, on the midfield. We all agree about this. But yeah, let’s see.”

When a defensive midfielder excels, it can be transformative for the team and the player. France international Claude Makélélé dominated the position during the early-2000s with Real Madrid and Chelsea to such an extent that everybody wanted that type of player. The position eventually became known as the “Makélélé Role.”

Xabi Alonso (Liverpool, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Spain), Michael Carrick (Manchester United, England), Andrea Pirlo (Juventus, Italy), Joshua Kimmich (Bayern Munich, Germany), N’Golo Kanté (Leicester, Chelsea, France) and Sergio Busquets (Barcelona, Inter Miami, Spain) have all followed the Makélélé blueprint, with Alonso and Carrick also adding goals and creativity to their game, just as Rodri has done with Villarreal, Atlético Madrid and City.

For City manager Pep Guardiola, whose success at Barcelona owed plenty to the work done by Busquets away from the spotlight shining on his teammates Lionel Messi, Xavi and Andrés Iniesta, there is no doubt as to Rodri’s status in the world game.

“He’s the best midfield player in the world currently by far because he is able to do everything,” Guardiola said. “The holding midfielder has to play positive, for him and for the team, and make the team play. This is the role for the holding midfielders. All the highlights have to be for the guys up front who score goals and make assists and so on.

“But Rodri always has the ability in important moments to score goals so he’s an unbelievable player. What a signing. It’s difficult to understand how we could have done what we have done in recent years without him.”

Guardiola’s view is shared by Luis de la Fuente, the Spain coach, who has known Rodri since working with him as youngster during Spain under-19s’ winning campaign at the 2015 European Championship in Greece. Rodri was central to that success as well as Spain’s emergence as champions at Euro 2024 this summer.

“I think he’s the best player in the world at his position and he’s accomplished enough to win the Ballon d’Or,” De La Fuente told ESPN. “It would be an injustice if he wasn’t one of the players in the running to win the Ballon d’Or.

“Those of us who have known Rodri from an early age, like I know him, aren’t surprised. We knew he had a lot of room to improve, and he’s improving still, but the growth he has experienced and above all his production now is the production of a genuine No. 1 in the world.

“One follows natural leadership, and Rodri has it. He’s a player who grabs his teammates’ attention and influences action. That’s why he is one of the strongest leaders. For us, Rodri’s importance is huge.”

It is another coach that Rodri regards as having the greatest impact on his career, however, in terms of making him the player that he is today. Rodri spent just one season working under Diego Simeone at Atlético Madrid, having moved to the Estadio Metropolitano from Villarreal in 2018 before City triggered his £62.6 million release clause 12 months later. But Rodri says that Simeone, a former defensive midfielder with Argentina, Lazio, Inter Milan and Atlético, added crucial elements to his game in their short time together.

“Well I think, I never said this, but I met Simone in the right moment,” Rodri told ESPN. “It was a great experience with him.

“The knowledge I got from him was great in the way I was playing because I thought that football just was with the ball and trying to be a beautiful footballer. But if I want to play holding midfield, you have to be also a bad guy sometimes and be trying to be better defensively and he improved me in that sense.

“The first time I met him he said, ‘I know you’re very good with the ball. I don’t care about that. I know you got it. I’m not going to work in that. I’m going to work in the other side. I think you can improve.’ And that’s what really happened: [Simeone taught me] blocks defensively, running the games, being competitive. And this is something I gained before I came here [to City].

“We all know how the rhythm of the Premier League is and how tough it is for the players to adapt into this league and I think that year [at Atlético] made it easier for me.”

Moving to City and linking up with Guardiola, after Simeone had toughened him up, proved to be Rodri’s finishing school.

“With Pep, we know I improve in all the aspects,” Rodri said. “I mean there’s a thing with him that he never gives up on. He never stops. He always thinks that you can be better and I agree. It’s something I’ve managed to try to improve in the areas that I think I can do better every day than every season.

“Now, I have to visualise all the players, visualise where the spaces are. Not only focus on the ball, but also what happens when you don’t have the ball. Like look in the sides, detect where the problems are.

“These kind of things that you might not think it’s useful before because no one tells you, but the first time someone tell you, you realise, oh yeah, you’re fine. If I move more intelligent, I can run less, but I can run better. It’s these kind of things [with Pep.]”

At the peak of his career and with multiple successes with City and Spain on his roll of honour, Rodri has made himself the reference point for every aspiring midfielder in the game. For Javier Calleja, Rodri’s coach at Villarreal, his progression has been everything he expected.

“I’m not surprised by his evolution,” Calleja told ESPN. “I didn’t know how far he was going to go, since obviously I can’t read the future, but I knew that he was going to have a brilliant career because he puts everything together to make him who he is. From his technique to his vision, positioning, intelligence on the pitch … and another thing that sets him apart that I’ve said puts him at the top is his character. His demeanour has made him the best midfielder in the world, every year getting better.

“I don’t think there’s a better player right now. It’s true that scorers get the most attention, but it would say a lot about football to recognise a player with Rodri’s ability and accomplishments toward winning a Ballon d’Or. Because he’s done it and he deserves it.”

Rodri has been selected by his fellow professionals in England as part of the Premier League Team of the Year for the past two seasons and, barring his injury, would have been expected to secure a spot for third successive year this time around. While pundits and supporters have their opinions, it is those who share the same space on the pitch who know best.

“He [Rodri] doesn’t get so much credit because he’s playing a position that doesn’t score, assist or it’s not so much on the scoresheet all the time,” City midfielder Ilkay Gündogan said. “But for me he’s one of the best players right now in the world.

“He’s someone that if there’s someone maybe in our team right now that is irreplaceable, for me it’s definitely Rodri. He’s such an important puzzle piece and he deserves to be named with the best players in the world.”

Former Spain international Juanfran played with and against Rodri during his eight-year career with Atlético, and told ESPN that Rodri’s calmness and humility mark him out as a special player.

“Rodri is a sensational and very simple guy,” Juanfran said. “He brings calmness in most situations on the pitch and he symbolises the success of a real humble guy. He’s a very normal guy who surrounds himself with normal people and acts normal. That’s a great virtue and it’s one of the keys to his success.

“He has gone from strength to strength and will continue to grow. He has also had very good teachers to learn from as he has been coached by two of the most important midfielders who played in Spain like Simeone and Guardiola, with two very different ways of interpreting football.

“If I could, I would vote for him to win the Ballon d’Or without even having to think about it for a second. He’s the No.1 in his position.”

City teammate Rico Lewis, who has been tried out by Guardiola in the defensive midfield role following Rodri’s injury, says that his teammate is “nine times out of 10 right” when making judgement calls on the pitch and is always “two steps ahead.”

But perhaps the greatest praise comes from Busquets, the former Barcelona and Spain midfielder, who Rodri has replaced in the national team. Busquets was the Rodri of Guardiola’s great Barcelona team and the crucial midfield cog in Spain’s 2010 World Cup-winning team, and he believes Rodri has become the world’s best in his position.

“You could always see the potential he had since he started at Villarreal, then at Atlético, then at City,” Busquets told ESPN. “He’s learned a lot, improved a lot, and today for me, he is the best midfielder in the world in terms of his position.

“It was a shame the injury he had. It’s the worst thing for a footballer. I talked to him and I hope he can return to the level he was at because he made us enjoy a lot and also in the team he was in, which I believe that the role he has is very important and his characteristics come to light individually and collectively.”

Michael Owen won the Ballon d’Or in 2001 after helping Liverpool win a treble of FA Cup, League Cup and UEFA Cup. It was another era — the former England striker didn’t even know what the award meant.

“When I first got told by [Liverpool manager] Gerard Houllier that I’d won it, I said to him, ‘What is it?'” Owen told ESPN. “I didn’t know what it was. I knew there was an award to vote for the best player in the world of that year, but I didn’t know what it was called and I didn’t know much about it. It’s very different now.”

In the age before Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi, who won the award 13 times between them from 2008 to 2023, the importance of the accolade was nowhere near the level that it enjoys today. But nonetheless, Owen was merely the latest in a long line of forwards to win it and he expected Vinícius to add to the list of attacking players who have won the Ballon d’Or this year.

“I’m not saying that a defensive midfielder can’t win it, but I think it’s a rarity for that to happen and I think it should be a rarity,” Owen said. “Why? Because the hardest thing is to score a goal. Lots and lots of players can ruin, can kick a ball into Row Z and get a clap, but to score a goal, to create a goal, every young player, when they start on the football pitch wants to score.

“So I will always favour an attacking player, but Rodri is the dominant force in his position and he has such an influence on the teams he plays for and those teams have been so successful, so this could be the year that a holding player could win the Ballon d’Or.”

Overcoming football’s inclination to favour the goal scorers and the creators — the headline-makers — was Rodri’s biggest challenge. Vinícius ticks every possible box for a potential Ballon d’Or winner, but Rodri, as Owen says, performs a different role. And while Rodri accepts the commercial aspect of the Ballon d’Or and that it is about more than simply what is achieved on the pitch, he believes that his position is as important as that of a goal scorer.

“I understand the debate, I understand the people that say they don’t see what they can see in a winger or a striker in a holding midfielder because we do such a different task on the pitch,” Rodri said.

“And I understand because football is about goals, it’s about the excitement of scoring and I get it. But on the other hand I can show you that being a midfielder, a defender, is as beautiful as being as a striker and it has different things to manage on the game. And in my opinion, the holding midfielder is a bigger role on the football pitch than a striker.

“I think we all agree that scoring is the most difficult thing in football and there’s a few players who they can score 30, 40 goals in the season. But the [holding midfield] role in terms of football is the most important.”

“I hope that the people that vote and the people that when they watch football, they don’t see the fancy cars or the fancy way you live, they just watch a game and we are equal on the game, no matter what you are or wherever you come from, you’re equal,” Rodri said. “So let’s see what the people [voters] think.”

Now we know what the voters think: yes, the ultimate team player can win football’s biggest individual award.