Lionel Messi has renewed his and Cristiano Ronaldo's spectacularly petty feud over soccer's greatest individual prize
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Barnaby Lane
Oct 12, 2021, 17:33 IST
Ronaldo and Messi at the 2015 Ballon d’Or ceremony.
Getty/Alexander Hassenstein
Lionel Messi has re-ignited his petty rivalry with Cristiano Ronaldo over the Ballon d'Or.
The Argentine says he wouldn't vote for the Portuguese to win if he could.
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Lionel Messi has reignited his petty rivalry with Cristiano Ronaldo over the Ballon d'Or by saying he wouldn't vote for the Portuguese to win this year's prize if he could.
The duo have scooped soccer's greatest individual men's prize a combined 11 times - with Messi having won it six times and Ronaldo five.
Despite their dominance, however, neither player has ever voted for the other to win the award on the six occasions they have been invited to do so.
The rivalry has been a subject of great discussion in the past, with both players failing to vote for each other, even on occassions when the other star was obviously the best player in the world in the previous season.
For instance, Ronaldo failed to vote for Messi during the 2012 season, despite the Argentine scoring 73 goals that year. Likewise, Messi did not vote for Ronaldo after his spectacular 2013-2014 campaign in which he scored 51 times and led Real Madrid to Champions League victory.
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Since 2016, the winner of prize - as it previously was when first created - has been voted for by journalists from across the world.
However, Messi has revealed that if did have the chance to vote this year, he would continue his run of omitting his great rival.
"Obviously, I have two players in my team that I would vote for, [Neymar] and Kylian [Mbappe]," the Argentine told L'Equipe.
"And then Robert Lewandowski, who has just had a great year and Karim Benzema who was excellent."
Ronaldo, on the other hand, is not among the favorites for the prize despite being named on the 30-man shortlist.
In a switch of circumstances to Messi, the Portuguese struggled for form during his final season at Juventus, but has hit the ground running since returning to Manchester United in the summer.
The winner of the 2021 Ballon d'Or will be announced at an awards ceremony on November 29.
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