‘Pathetic’, ‘Small Club’ Real Madrid ‘Thinks World Revolves Around It’ Says France Legend

Former France national team head coach Raymond Domenech attacked a “pathetic” and “repulsive” Real Madrid for thinking that the “world revolves around it”, as the furore surrounding the 2024 Ballon d’Or men’s player award continues.

Madrid winger Vinicius Jr. was widely expected to receive the highest individual accolade in the sport from France Football, which annually crowns both the man and woman deemed to be the world’s best football players.

In a shocking turn of events, however, news broke hours ahead of the Ballon d’Or ceremony on Monday that Vinicius Jr. would be overlooked in favour of Manchester and Spain midfielder Rodri, which later proved to be true.

Madrid cancelled its plans to send a delegation to the gala in Paris when it was informed of the plot twist, which meant that nobody from Los Blancos was present to receive its award for best team while Carlo Ancelotti and Kylian Mbappe also couldn’t accept their best head coach and top goalscorer gongs.

France Football editor-in-chief Vincent Garcia has already been critical of the Spanish giants’ conduct, but Domenech was scathing in an interview with Goal.

“It is said that Real Madrid is a great club, and Real Madrid itself wants it to be said that it is,” he said.

“In the meantime, it turns out that it is a small club. Very small! What it did is absolutely pathetic. They showed a lack of respect for football, the other participants of the gala, and the winners. It’s frankly repulsive,” added the 2006 World Cup finalist.

Regarding Madrid allegedly putting pressure on France Football to know the name of the winner in advance, Domenech called it “terrible, I repeat, terrible behavior” from “a club that claims to be great”.

“Someone defined them well by saying something like ‘Real doesn’t start a game until they know what result it will end up with’.

“They must understand that the world of football does not revolve around them. Real have a white shirt, but yesterday, in my opinion, this shirt was very stained,” Domenech concluded.

Elsewhere in France, though, the 2022 recipient of the award Karim Benzema criticized the award and the magazine while revealing that his former teammate Vinicius is “sad” about being denied the top prize.