Real Madrid players sweep the UEFA awards

It was a big night in Monaco for Real Madrid individual achievements as UEFA announced the 2018 recipients of their player awards.

Keylor Navas won the “Goalkeeper of the Season” award. Real captain Sergio Ramos received the “Defender of the Season” award. And Luka Modric took home both the “Midfielder of the Season” and “Player of the Year” awards. Ronaldo, who Real can still take credit for, also won “Forward of the Season”. Ex-Galáctico David Beckham also won UEFA’s lifetime achievement award, the “UEFA President’s Award”.

The Player of the Year award is usually a good indicator of who will win the Ballon D’Or, this might end up being Modric’s year to take the award home for the first time in his career. A player not named Ronaldo or Messi has not won the Ballon D’Or since 2007, when Kaká won it with Milan. Luka would’ve certainly earned it if he wins it this year after winning the Champions League and captaining Croatia all the way to the World Cup Final.

A more humorous incident happened at the UEFA awards as well. Sergio Ramos was seated right behind Mo Salah, whoever assigned that seating is a genius, and decided to see how his arm was feeling.

Just a bit of humor as Ramos has been condemned as the worst human being in the world. Ramos does have absolute huevos of steel though, he knows just how to wire social media up.

Ronaldo’s manager calls Player of the Year decision “shameful”

Still on the subject of the UEFA awards, Ronaldo’s manager, Jorge Mendes, was pretty upset with the decision to snub Ronaldo for the Player of the Year award.

“Football is played on the field and that’s where Cristiano won.”

“He scored 15 goals, carried Real Madrid on his back, and conquered the Champions League again.”

“It’s ridiculous, shameful. The winner is not in doubt, as Ronaldo is the best in his position.”

As Ronaldo’s manager, obviously Mendes is going to voice his support for his client. Regardless of who you think should have won this award, it’s a bit disrespectful towards Luka to basically say he doesn’t deserve it. As dominant as Ronaldo was in the Champions League this past season, he didn’t do it all by himself.

This is a team that is pretty strong at all positions, which is why all the awards were won by Real players (other than the fact of winning the Champions League). It’s just a bit ridiculous to suggest that Real are a one-man team, who still won the Champions League despite Ronaldo not scoring against Bayern or Liverpool. In no way am I discrediting Ronaldo’s European success last season either, he was instrumental.

It’ll be interesting to see what Mendes has to say if Modric manages to win the Ballon D’Or this year. My guess, he won’t be too happy then either.

Perez goes after Inter again for Modric signing attempt

Real Madrid president Florentino Perez was asked again about the Modric situation and had some new thoughts to share.

“I’ve never seen a club want to buy our 10 without paying.”

“It’s the first time this has happened to me in my life.”

As we already know, Real filed a complaint with FIFA claiming that Inter had illegally approached Modric about a transfer to Milan. Inter then took action against Javier Tebas, the LaLiga president, over him claiming Inter were using tricks to try and get Modric.

Obviously, this whole situation is a bit irrelevant now because Modric is still a Real player with less than a day before the transfer window closes. If what Perez is claiming is indeed true, it would be an illegal approach made; you can’t do this unless the player is soon running out of contract.

Nothing will likely come of any of these claims being made by both clubs, though it would be interesting to find out the whole truth in what actually happened in this saga.