Lionel Messi won the Golden Ball as European soccer’s player of the year on Monday, easily beating out Cristiano Ronaldo, and becoming the first Argentine to win the award. The voting was by the magazine France Football; the 96 voters gave Messi 473 points out of a possible 480; last season C Ron beat out Messi for the award, this year it was nearly unanimous as Ronaldo had 233 points; the winning margin was a record.

“Honestly, I knew that I was among the favorites because Barcelona had a fruitful year in 2009,” Messi told the magazine. “But I didn’t expect to win with such a margin. The Ballon d’Or is very important to me. All the players who won it were great players, and some great players never won it.”

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