Sir Alex Ferguson has today spoken of his pride in Cristiano Ronaldo for winning the Ballon d’Or. To think that just as we missed out on having Ruud van Nistelrooy playing in a United shirt when scoring the goal to make him the highest ever scorer in the Champions League, we could have missed out on this moment with Ronaldo had he too signed for Real Madrid.
Instead, Ronaldo becomes our fourth player to win the prize, meaning just five clubs in Europe have more winners than us.
With the likes of Bryan Robson, Eric Cantona, David Beckham, Roy Keane, Ryan Giggs, to name a few, always missing out on the award, Ferguson believes this winner has been a long time coming, some 40 years after George Best won it following our European Cup win in 1968.
“We are very proud,” said Ferguson. “Manchester United had been waiting for this for 40 years. Cristiano is in the tradition of our three other Ballons d’Or. His award is beyond all possible dispute. He is only 23 years old. His best years are ahead of him. In life, you have two categories of people. Those who reach their goal and go to bed saying to themselves, ‘I made it’ and the other ones, who are driven by will, desire. These ones, when they win the trophy, they say to themselves ‘I go on’… Ronaldo has that sparkle in himself.”
After Ronaldo won the trophy he claimed he was not surprised, but vowed to become and even better player.
“Great emotion fills me but I cannot really describe it,” he said. “I want to thank those who voted for me, those who know me and those who live with me. I was not worried, because I was aware of what I did in the course of the season. But to the people who mentioned my name, I say thank you. Thank you also to my team-mates. This (trophy) is one that I want to win again because it is so good. Therefore, I will wake and I will say to myself, ‘I want to be even better’.”
even though he did manage to make our summer less pleasurable(considerably less)..am genuinly happy for the boy..
wonder how this award is gonna affect his mentality.. i cant help but feel that winning these types of awards was one of the reasons he wanted to join real in the first place..i bet he felt he was much more likely to get it if he had signed for them
now that its over n the awards have come i hope he appreciates everything the club has done for him now, we have stood by him after the world cup, against the critics, whenever anyone belittled his achievements, and whenever he was actually at fault.. he wouldnt find this kind of support at any of the other big clubs in europe, especially not from those handkerchief waving muppets at madrid