The Copa America is now two rounds in the books and there are now four teams left. The playing field for the MVP award known as the Golden Ball has been narrowed. Who has been the top star in the Copa America to date?
Neymar finished his season with Barcelona scoring 40 goals including tallies in the finals of the Copa del Rey and Champions League. He had the kind of year that is often considered legendary and seemed on his way to being a finalist for the 2015 Ballon d'Or.
The 2014-15 season will come to an end this weekend with the Champions League final. The summer festivities will then get underway with the Copa America and Euro Cup qualifiers.
The Ballon d'Or conversations will also get underway as a means of seeing which players have emerged at the halfway mark of the year. Here is an early preview with the nominees less than six months away from being announced.
Cristiano Ronaldo's season has been over for one week. Lionel Messi's will be over in just days. At this point, with the Champions League still to be determined it is a good time to compare what the two seasons have been like for the world's two best players.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi continued their tremendous seasons with two big games this past week. Each player contested a Champions League contest and then sought a new way to lead their respective clubs to Spanish League glory.
The Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi saga continued this past week with both players getting chances to make statements in the Champions League and the Spanish League.
Two weeks ago Real Madrid fell to Barcelona 2-1 in a Clasico that reminded the world of why one club was on the decline and the other was at its peak form. Incidentally, the match reminded the world of why Lionel Messi was in superior form to rival Cristiano Ronaldo.
The seemingly inevitable took place on Wednesday when Manchester City suffered elimination at the hands of Barcelona for the second straight year in the Champions League.
Defeat was by one goal yet again, but this time it was agonizing as they come. The score was 1-0, but it was nowhere near as close as the score indicated. Here are some things we learned from Barcelona's 1-0 romp.
And now things get heated. The year 2015 has been a showcase for Lionel Messi and no one, not even Cristiano Ronaldo, can deny that the Argentine has been the best player in the world to start the year. Even Ronaldo would not be considered second as his goal totals have been topped by Barcelona's Neymar and Luis Suarez. So if the Ballon d'Or voting started this week, Ronaldo would not be close to the top three.
With their competition as tight as it has ever been, Cristiano Ronaldo and rival Lionel Messi sought out new ways to top one another and help their respective teams in a parallel title race in the Spanish League.
For the second straight week, Messi got two chances to top his rival and this time he did so, emphatically. He had a solid Copa del Rey game against Villarreal in which he added an assist to his totals, but it was on the weekend against Rayo Vallecano where Messi really did his damage.
