Manchester United Cristiano Ronaldo has won the 2008 Ballon D’Or award, according to an announcement made by French magazine France Football at 0200 GMT. Ronaldo picked up a massive 446 votes out of a possible 480, and was the only player on the lists of all the 96 journalists. Barcelona’s Lionel Messi came second with 267 votes, while Liverpool striker Fernando Torres was third with 165 votes. Ronaldo is the fourth Manchester United player to win the award, after Dennis Law, Sir Bobby Charlton and George Best. He is only the third Portuguese player to bag the coveted award after Eusebio in 1965 and Luis Figo in 2000.
Ronaldo was instrumental in Manchester United winning the double in the 2007-08 season
Manchester City are the latest club to join the growing list of admirers of young Hibs striker Steven Fletcher. Fletcher, a product of the youth academy at Easter Road, was also linked with a £4m move to Real Madrid in the summer. Middlesbrough, Bolton, Everton and Aston Villa are among the other Premiership clubs that have kept track of the striker’s progress.
Fletcher was part of the Scotland U-19 team that lost to Spain in the final of the European Championships two years ago. He made his debut for Scotland in a friendly against Croatia in March 2008.
On a poor day for the Premiership’s big four, Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool were held to a goalless draw at Anfield by Fulham, who, prior to this game, had picked up just one point from their trips away from Craven Cottage this season. But because Chelsea and Manchester United had similar results against Newcastle and Aston Villa respectively, Liverpool are still on the same number of points as the Blues.
Fernando Torres started for Liverpool, and was easily their best attacking player of the afternoon. Robbie Keane looked short on confidence, and neither Dirk Kuyt nor Albert Riera were at their best as Liverpool desperately looked for a way to break Fulham down. With skipper Steven Gerrard out of the squad with an injury, Liverpool were unable to deliver the killing blow to Roy Hodgson’s side, for whom a stalemate was as good as a win.
Torres was easily Liverpool's best player on show ( Photo : Philip Gabrielsen)
With Gerrard unavailable Benitez surprised one and all by starting with Lucas Leiva, and relegating in form Xabi Alonso to the bench. The Reds started off fairly well, although there were plenty of misplaced passes floating around. The best chance of the first half fell to Robbie Keane after Fabio Aurelio’s ball had taken deflections off both Torres and Jimmy Bullard, but Australian keeper Mark Schwarzer did well to get his face in the way. In his Spurs days, you would have probably seen Keane loft it over the keeper rather than smash it into this face.
