Ballon d’Or, the finalists: no Italians, Modric absent, Cristiano Ronaldo the favorite

Pallone d'oro finalisti Cristiano Ronaldo favorito Modric grande assente

Modric will not be able to defend the Golden Ball won last year (photo Ansa)

ROME – Cristiano Ronaldo is there , the Italians are not. And Luka Modric enters history as the first player ever to be excluded even from the nominations after winning the prize the previous year. The list of 30 candidates for the 2019 Golden Ball , announced by the magazine France Football, is as always discussed.

To make the noise is above all the exclusion of the 34 year-old Croatian player of Real Madrid, winner of the prestigious individual prize last season after winning the Champions League with Real for the third year in a row and having led Croatia to the World Cup final then lost to France.

It was Modric who had interrupted the ten-year domination of Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi , who this time returned to challenge each other for the prize that they both put on the bulletin board five times. However, the champions of Juventus and Barcelona are not the absolute favorites.

In fact, for the bookies there is a defender in the front row for the Ballon d'Or and it is Virgil van Dijk from Liverpool. Among the "eligible candidates" of the Reds, winners of the last Champions, there are also the Brazilian goalkeeper Alisson, the Senegalese Sadio Mané and the Egyptian Mohamed Salah. Among the excluded are illustrious Neymar, Luis Suarez and Harry Kane.

Of note is the exploit of the Premier League, which alone boasts 15 candidates: exactly half of the total. No Italian in contention, while for Serie A, in addition to CR7, there are two defenders: Kalidou Koulibaly from Napoli and Matthijs de Ligt from Juventus, who was included for his performances in Ajax.

This is the list of the thirty players in the nomination, in brackets the belonging team and the nationality: Sadio Mané (Liverpool, Senegal), Sergio Aguero (Manchester City, Argentina), Frenkie De Jong (Barcelona, ​​Holland), Hugo Lloris (Tottenham , France), Dusan Tadic (Ajax, Serbia), Kylian Mbappé (Paris Saint-Germain, France), Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool, England), Donny van de Beek (Ajax, Netherlands), Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Arsenal, Gabon).

Marc-André ter Stegen (Barcelona, ​​Germany), Cristiano Ronaldo (Juventus, Portugal), Alisson (Liverpool, Brazil), Matthijs de Ligt (Juventus, Holland), Karim Benzema (Real Madrid, France), Georginio Wijnaldum (Liverpool, Holland ), Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool, Holland), Bernardo Silva (Manchester City, England), Heung-min Son (Tottenham, South Korea), Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich, Poland).

Roberto Firmino (Liverpool, Brazil), Kevin De Bruyne (Manchester City, Belgium), Riyad Mahrez (Manchester City, Algeria), Kalidou Koulibaly (Naples, Senegal), Lionel Messi (Barcelona, ​​Argentina), Antoine Griezmann (Barcelona, ​​France) .

Joao Felix (Atletico Madrid, Portugal), Raheem Sterling (Manchester City, England), Eden Hazard (Real Madrid, Belgium), Mohamed Salah (Liverpool, Egypt), Marquinhos (Paris Saint-Germain, Brazil) (source AdnKronos).

The Golden Ball article , the finalists: no Italians, Modric absent, Cristiano Ronaldo the favorite seems to be the first on daily Blitz .

Source: Blitz Quotidiano

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