Ballon d'Or 2018: Whom did India vote for?

Modric was the deserving winner of the most prestigious individual award in world football.

On an auspicious day in the footballing world, Real Madrid midfielder Luka Modric ended the extraordinary dominance of two of the greatest ever players in the history of the game- Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, by winning the Ballon d’Or award. The Croatian broke the 10-year winning streak of the two superstars.

The Ballon d'Or award is presented every year by the magazine France Football, to the best male performer of the previous year based on the votes of football journalists all over the world. This year, 176 journalists took part in the voting and the Croatian turned out to be the winner, after earning the most number of points. India too, was part of the voting process with Dhiman Sarkar, the Hindustan Times journalist, being the representative.

After the presentation ceremony, the list of the journalists from every country was revealed, and whom did they vote for. According to the list, it appears that Dhiman voted Real Madrid defender Raphael Varane at number one followed by Modric, Kylian Mbappe, then Cristiano Ronaldo and finally at the fifth place, Lionel Messi.

Varane was part of the five-man shortlist of various other countries, too, like Argentina, Belgium, France, UAE and several others. However, Modric was included by majority of the journalists in their shortlist and was clearly a deserving winner.

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Dhiman, who voted the 33-year-old at the second place, contributed 4 points to his massive total of 753 points. The former Tottenham star’s points tally had a huge marginal difference of 275 points as compared to Cristiano Ronaldo, who stood at second place with 478 points.

It was a marvellous year indeed for Modric as he won his 4th Champions League title with the Los Blancos in May and also helped Croatia reach the finals of the FIFA World Cup in Russia in the summer. For his top-drawer performances in all competitions, he also won the UEFA Men’s Player of the Year Award as well as the FIFA Men’s Best Player Award a few months ago.