Ronaldo won the 2016 Ballon d'Or.

France Football magazine, the organizer of the event, confirmed Cristiano Ronaldo as the winner of this year's Player of the Year award.

The photo of Ronaldo with the Ballon d'Or, released by France Football, was taken at Real Madrid headquarters last week.

At the awards ceremony held on the evening of December 12th in Paris, France Football confirmed that Ronaldo received the most votes in the poll of 173 journalists from around the world. Messi came in second, while the remaining three positions in the Top 5 belonged to Griezmann, Suarez, and Neymar.

The top three players in this year's competition were all absent from the awards ceremony. Ronaldo was busy preparing with Real Madrid for the FIFA Club World Cup in Japan, Griezmann was playing in Atletico Madrid's match against Villarreal, while Messi was training with Barca in Spain.

Gareth Bale is ranked sixth, while the seventh and eighth positions belong to the Leicester City duo Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy. The remaining positions in the Top 20 belong to Pepe, Buffon (both ninth), Aubameyang (11), Rui Patricio (12), Ibrahimovic (13), Paul Pogba, Arturo Vidal (14), Robert Lewandowski (16), Luka Modric, Dmitri Payet and Toni Kroos (17).

This is the fourth time in Ronaldo's career that he has won the Ballon d'Or. The previous three times were in 2008, 2013, and 2014. Ronaldo's achievement is only one title short of Messi's record, who won the Ballon d'Or in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2015.

Between 2010 and 2015, the Ballon d'Or was linked with the FIFA Best Player award to create the joint FIFA Ballon d'Or title. From this year onwards, the two awards will once again be held separately, as before.

According to experts, Ronaldo winningThe 2016 Ballon d'Or was a fitting result after a year of collective achievements. During this successful period, Ronaldo won both the Champions League with Real Madrid and the European Championship with the Portuguese national team. In addition to his collective successes, CR7 also scored 102 goals in 110 matches across all competitions.

Meanwhile, Griezmann was the unluckiest player, repeatedly losing to Ronaldo in both the Champions League and Euro finals. Messi won the La Liga and Copa del Rey double with Barcelona but lost in the Copa America final.

According to VNE