{"id":623788,"date":"2026-09-22T10:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T10:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/623788\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T10:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T10:30:09","slug":"the-ballon-dor-should-go-to-leo-messi-cristian-romero-backs-argentina-icon-for-individual-glory-and-slams-marketing-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/623788\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;The Ballon d&#8217;Or should go to Leo Messi&#8217; &#8211; Cristian Romero backs Argentina icon for individual glory and slams &#8216;marketing&#8217; bias"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An unshakeable admiration for the legendary playmaker underpins the conviction that no contemporary rival can match his sustained excellence. That perspective fuels the argument that individual voting criteria will change drastically once the veteran officially hangs up his boots. Reiterating the talisman&#8217;s singular status at the summit of the game, Romero declared: &#8220;There is nobody else like Messi. I keep saying it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Lamenting how promotional appeal could decide future winners, the centre-back continued: &#8220;Surely, once Messi decides to call time on his career, we&#8217;ll have to see who they give the Ballon d&#8217;Or to. To whichever player has the most marketing power, because that is pretty much what it comes down to.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Similar backing for the forward came from Atletico manager Diego Simeone last week. Assessing who merits the Ballon d&#8217;Or, he noted: &#8220;Messi, without a shadow of a doubt. After the World Cup he had, at his age, without any doubt, Messi.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An unshakeable admiration for the legendary playmaker underpins the conviction that no contemporary rival can match his sustained&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[9877,111144,28290,180632,85,15022,46,15023,105],"class_list":["post-623788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-argentina","tag-atletico-madrid","tag-ballon-dor","tag-c-romero","tag-il","tag-inter-miami-cf","tag-israel","tag-l-messi","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}