Considering Croatia, not a traditional European big team, made the final, had some questionable decisions against them in the final.. And Real won the Champions league both of which he was a big part.. League does matter but Champions league and World cup are simply bigger and thats how it should be.. I think him winning was probably the right decision and this is how Ballon D`or has always been before this stupid captains and Journalist vote merge thing which they did and made it into a popularity contest amongst players instead of it being just the journalists..... In 2010, Xavi should`ve probably won on the back of League plus World Cup..
The domestic leagues decidedly
don't matter any longer. No player from the top three won their respective leagues, and only one of those three won the World Cup, which just so happens to be the worst placed of the three.
Modric and Ronaldo both have exactly
one trophy to their name in 2018, and that's the Champions League. This is exactly why I fear that it's only a matter of time before the European Super League becomes a reality. Not a single casual fan or viewer gives a shit about La Liga or Ligue 1 or Serie A or the Bundesliga. Maybe someone can be arsed to give a bit of a shit about the Premier League, because of it's massive brand and name, but the Champions League is where it's at. That really is the only thing that matters.
If you look at the Ballon d'Or top three from 2014 to 2018, there have been more players
without a domestic league title than players
with a domestic league title. In 2014 Messi led Argentina to the finals and won the Golden Ball, very much like Modric. He also won La Liga but he didn't win the Champions League so he - unlike Modric - has nothing to show for it in terms of Ballon d'Or.
I haven't checked with prior winners, but I'm confident Modric has the worst win rate of a Ballon d'Or winner, at least in the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century. 53% is a horrible win rate. And once again, let me remind you that Modric has
one trophy in all of 2018. Yes, he did reach the World Cup final, and yes he was very good in the tournament, but his level and his impact have been ridiculously overstated and overrated since the Champions League final. He and Kroos have been horrible for most of the year and has been consistently overrun by various midfields.
Once again, let me remind you that this was also the case in Croatia's first World Cup match against Nigeria, where both Modric and Rakitic looked absolutely lost. Adding Brozovic fixed that. Without Brozovic I don't think Croatia hammer Argentina the way they did. They absolutely bossed the middle of the park that day, and it was just as much Rakitic and Brozovic as it was Modric. And that was basically the
only truly good game that Croatia played this summer. A narrow 2-1 win against Iceland in an irrelevant match, 1-1 against Denmark winning on penalties, 2-2 against Russia winning on penalties, a late 2-1 win against England in extra-time and then a 2-4 loss to France. The 3-0 hammering of Argentina was the single good game Croatia played, and Modric wasn't even the standout player in that game.
The Ballon d'Or has become a complete and utter joke, and giving the trophy to Modric in arguably his worst year in half a decade does nothing but prove it.
