{"id":60063,"date":"2014-10-28T07:02:52","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T07:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=60063"},"modified":"2014-10-28T07:02:52","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T07:02:52","slug":"cristiano-ronaldo-headlines-fifa-ballon-dor-shortlist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=60063","title":{"rendered":"Cristiano Ronaldo headlines FIFA Ballon d&#8217;Or shortlist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Real Madrid&#8217;s\u00a0Cristiano Ronaldo will be bidding for his third Ballon D&#8217;or after being named in FIFA&#8217;s shortlist for the award.<\/p>\n<p>The list for the 2014 Ballon D&#8217;or was released on Tuesday and features four-time winner Lionel Messi of Barcelona and Germany&#8217;s World Cup-winning captain Phillip Lahm.<\/p>\n<p>The list also features six players from the successful German team in Brazil \u00a0including\u00a0<span style=\"color: #666666;\">Mario Goetze, who scored the winning goal in the final, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Thomas Muller, Manuel Neuer (all of Bayern Munich), \u00a0and Real Madrid&#8217;s Toni Kroos.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_33468\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-33468\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sport.citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Germany-World-Cup.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-33468\" src=\"http:\/\/sport.citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Germany-World-Cup.jpg\" alt=\"Germany's world cup- winning team well represented in Ballon D'or shortlist\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-33468\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Germany&#8217;s world cup- winning team well represented in Ballon D&#8217;or shortlist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"color: #666666;\">Brazilian Neymar, who scored four goals at the finals in his home country, the Netherlands&#8217;\u00a0Arjen Robben \u00a0James Rodriguez of Colombia, Spaniard\u00a0Sergio Ramos Yaya Toure of C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire and\u00a0\u00a0Chelsea&#8217;s Belgian winger Eden Hazard are also in the running for the award.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #666666;\">Gareth Bale (Wales), Karim Benzema (France), Diego Costa (Spain), Thibaut Courtois (Belgium) Angel Di Maria (Argentina), Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Sweden), Andres Iniesta (Spain),Javier Mascherano (Argentina) Paul Pogba of France round off the 23-man shortlist<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Conspicuously missing from the list is Barcelona&#8217;s Luis Suarez , who&#8217;s stellar season in which he scored 31 league goals for Liverpool was somewhat marred by his ban for biting at the World Cup.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_33073\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-33073\" style=\"width: 660px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sport.citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Real-Madrid-Cristiano-Ronaldo-celeb-2014_3218284.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-33073 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/sport.citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Real-Madrid-Cristiano-Ronaldo-celeb-2014_3218284.jpg\" alt=\"Real-Madrid-Cristiano-Ronaldo-celeb-2014_3218284\" width=\"660\" height=\"350\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-33073\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cristiano Ronaldo will be hoping to win his third Ballon D&#8217;or<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>FIFA also released the shortlist for the Coach of the Year award which features Germany&#8217;s World Cup winning coach, Joachim Loew, Carlo Ancelotti, who won the Champions league with Real Madrid and Diego Simeone of\u00a0Atletico Madrid who led the capital club a a surprise La Liga triumph and Champions league final last season.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #666666;\"><strong style=\"color: #474747;\">The following 23 men (in alphabetical order) are in contention for the FIFA Ballon d\u2019Or 2014:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #666666;\">Gareth Bale (Wales), Karim Benzema (France), Diego Costa (Spain), Thibaut Courtois (Belgium), Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal), Angel Di Maria (Argentina), Mario Goetze (Germany), Eden Hazard (Belgium), Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Sweden), Andres Iniesta (Spain), Toni Kroos (Germany), Philipp Lahm (Germany), Javier Mascherano (Argentina), Lionel Messi (Argentina), Thomas Mueller (Germany), Manuel Neuer (Germany), Neymar (Brazil), Paul Pogba (France), Sergio Ramos (Spain), Arjen Robben (Netherlands), James Rodriguez (Colombia), Bastian Schweinsteiger (Germany), Yaya Toure (C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire).<\/p>\n<p><strong style=\"color: #474747;\">The following ten coaches (in alphabetical order, first nationality and then team) are in contention for the FIFA World Coach of the Year for Men\u2019s Football 2014:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Carlo Ancelotti (Italy\/Real Madrid CF), Antonio Conte (Italy\/Juventus FC\/Italy national team), Pep Guardiola (Spain\/FC Bayern Munich), Juergen Klinsmann (Germany\/ USA national team), Joachim Loew (Germany\/Germany national team), Jose Mourinho (Portugal\/Chelsea FC), Manuel Pellegrini (Chile\/Manchester City FC), Alejandro Sabella (Argentina\/Argentina national team), Diego Simeone (Argentina\/Atletico Madrid), Louis van Gaal (Netherlands\/Netherlands national team\/Manchester United FC).<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>By: Edwin Kwakofi\/ citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"twitter-follow-button\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/eddiekkofi\" data-show-count=\"false\">Follow @eddiekkofi<\/a><br \/>\n<script>\/\/ <![CDATA[\n!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=\/^http:\/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+':\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Real Madrid&#8217;s\u00a0Cristiano Ronaldo will be bidding for his third Ballon D&#8217;or after being named in FIFA&#8217;s shortlist for the award. The list for the 2014 Ballon D&#8217;or was released on Tuesday and features four-time winner Lionel Messi of Barcelona and Germany&#8217;s World Cup-winning captain Phillip Lahm. The list also features six players from the successful [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":60064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29,3],"class_list":["post-60063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dr-mahamudu-bawumia","tag-ghana-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/60064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}