Robert Lewandowski admits that he still doesn't know the true reason why organisers cancelled the Ballon d'Or in 2020, with the Polish striker the favourite to win the award.
When surprisingly cancelling the Ballon d'Or in 2020, organisers justified the decision by stating that the "unordinary conditions" would not allow for a "fair comparison" between all players due to Covid. After a brief stoppage, though, football had still largely taken place, with league competitions and the Champions League still going ahead.
That calendar year, Lewandowski helped Bayern Munich win the Bundesliga, Champions League and DFB-Pokal treble, all while plundering a vast amount of goals in against hapless 'keepers. However, the cancelling of the Ballon d'Or means he has an award missing from his trophy cabinet, after being deemed the worthy recipient in the public court of opinion.
Robert Lewandowski "doesn't know why" Ballon d'Or was cancelled in 2020
Indeed, Lionel Messi even acknolwedged the Pole should have won the award when collecting his 2021 gong - though no retrospective presentation is likely forthcoming.
"I think that’s the only year it was cancelled, for some reason," Lewandowski exclusively tells FourFourTwo. "I don’t know why. Maybe some years later I’ll understand what the reason was. For now, I don’t have the answer."
Despite missing out on the Ballon d'Or, Lewandowski was still named the FIFA Player of the Year in both 2020 and 2021, after he managed a staggering 41 Bundesliga goals in just 29 games, beating the 50-year record held by Gerd Muller.
So while he acknolwedges that missing out on the Golden Ball hurt, being recognised with other accolades when competing against the likes of Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo is still just as good.
"If you win the FIFA award twice, and you can call yourself the best player in the world for two years in a row, that means a lot," Lewandowski says. "Of course, with the Ballon d’Or, sometimes different things around football are also important.
"But if you’re winning FIFA best player in the world, if you’re being compared with Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi at that time, even then you can think you’ve achieved a lot, because I was close to them. Sometimes I couldn’t beat them, on the pitch and also with the individual trophies, so in winning those awards, I could really enjoy the moment.
"I don’t know how many players could beat both of them. I was proud: they’re legends who wrote the history of football and I was somewhere close to them."
