Diego Simeone says he loves Raphinha and cannot believe he did not win the Ballon d Or

if barca defense does not implode in those last minutes and they see out that tie the whole narrative shifts and raphinha probably walks away with either ballon d or or at least champions league player of the season
 
the cruel twist is that if barca had actually won the champions league the favourite for the award from that squad still might have been lamine because of all the youngest ever records and euros hype
 
so you end up with this scenario where the guy with historic g plus a gets overshadowed by the teenager everyone is calling the next big thing that is pure awards politics
 
dembele winning is not some robbery from another planet he had an insane year and the treble will always carry massive weight but raphinha outside the top three is just silly
 
for me ideal podium was dembele raphinha and probably salah based on the early season form even if salah tailed off badly in the last couple of months
 
salah basically shot himself in the foot with that weak finish two goals and one assist in twelve to close the season is not how you convince voters no matter how elite the first half was
 
some people keep saying only journalists vote but most of these awards are a full circus journalists players coaches fans everyone has turned it into a glorified popularity and pr contest
 
you can tell it works like the oscars clubs only really push one or at most two names hard because they do not want to split the vote barca clearly went all in on yamal and left raphinha hanging
 
real madrid fans acting like they do not do the same with vini and jude the year before is hilarious everyone plays the exact same pr game when it suits them
 
pedri finishing outside top ten and cole palmer ranking above him was probably the loudest proof that half the voters are just catching a few premier league highlights and winging the rest
 
there were people calling pedri not even top midfielder in the world while he was running midfields for fun if you seriously think that you probably watch more talk shows than matches
 
someone up there said professional clowns and honestly that is the best description for a chunk of these voters it is hard to take the final list seriously after some of those placements
 
the pr backlash on yamal is funny too couple of months ago everyone was glazing him to the moon now it is trendy to pretend he was never that good and blame barca pr for everything
 
in reality he was brilliant for his age won a double almost made a champions league final and racked up a bunch of youngest ever records that is obviously going to sway people
 
none of that changes that raphinha was the engine of that team for long stretches though he dragged them through so many ugly games when others were off it
 
dembele winning the champions league is the one argument that just kills most debates trophies at that level are still the biggest trump card when the numbers are even close
 
but when you realise raphinha had seven more goal contributions in europe and ten more in all competitions you can see why so many neutrals keep calling it a robbery
 
then again these things were never about pure merit and everyone here knows it that is why people barely remember who finished third or fourth a year later
 
the lamal overshadowing was probably the worst strategic choice from barca if they even pushed both equally maybe raphinha sneaks second instead of ending up fifth like some side character
 
also worth mentioning that domestic cups in spain simply hit harder than in france lifting both there plus that champions league run should be a huge boost for any case
 
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