Cristiano Ronaldo was the world’s most in-form player by the end of 2013, while Franck Ribery was the poster boy of the globe’s greatest team over the
calendar year. But above and beyond those achievements, Barcelona icon Lionel Messi proved once more that he remains the best there is and that he deserves a fifth straight Ballon d’Or title.
It was by no means a vintage year for the Argentine, with his attempts to back up a phenomenal record of 91 goals in 2012 being frustrated by constant injury problems from April onwards. But one should not immediately overlook the magnificent achievements he was still able to rack up in a truncated 12 months.
While Ronaldo spent most of 2013 flattering in the bigger games of Real Madrid and Portugal before his big moment in Stockholm in November, Ribery was part of a magnificent Bayern Munich side which would more than likely have swept all before them even had the Frenchman not been available to weave his own brand of magic. Messi, though, still shone enough to prove that he is the world’s greatest footballer by some distance.
The Barcelona genius began the year on a run of seven successive goalscoring appearances in La Liga, which he would sustain until picking up a calf injury in April, in the process racking up a goal against every Spanish top-flight club in consecutive fixtures – an unprecedented and frankly sensational statistic.
Even when he was carrying injuries thereafter, he remained potent. It was away to Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League quarter-final first leg that he picked up that first calf strain, but by the time he was forced off at half-time, he had already netted one of the away goals which would eventually see Barcelona through.
And despite being clearly unfit, Messi returned to the fray as a substitute in the second leg eight days later, with the Blaugrana heading out of the competition, and set up Pedro’s crucial equaliser to end the French side’s hopes of an upset once and for all.
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