Cristiano Ronaldo

What, you were expecting someone else?

Cristiano Ronaldo has won FIFA's 2016 Men's Player of the Year Award, as expected, beating out finalists Lionel Messi and Antoine Griezmann.

Congratulations, @Cristiano Ronaldo!
Winner of #TheBest FIFA Men's Player 2016  pic.twitter.com/6kNMWROFce

The FIFA FIFPro World XI, which doesn't matter but people pretend to care about anyway, was announced at the FIFA Awards Gala, which doesn't matter but people pretend to care about anyway, today.

It was, as it is every year, basically Barcelona, Real Madrid and Manuel Neuer.

Well, and Dani Alves, who played the first part of this year with Barcelona and the second part with Juventus. Here's the full squad:

Goalkeeper

Manuel Neuer (Bayern Munich/Germany)

Defenders

Dani Alves (Juventus/Brazil)

Real Madrid cruised to a 5-0 victory over Granada on Saturday, moving six points clear of Barcelona in the La Liga table. Goals from Karim Benzema, Cristiano Ronaldo, Carlos Casemiro and a brace from Isco condemned Granada to their tenth defeat of the season — they’re currently 19th in the table.

The Bernabeu crowd were treated to five goals within the hour, and Real Madrid made it 39 consecutive matches unbeaten, equalling the all time Spanish record.

The prematch festivities included a presentation of Cristiano Ronaldo’s fourth Ballon d’Or trophy. 

First grade is a time of personal discovery. At six years of age, it's a time when children learn simple things like raising their hands, not interrupting the speaker and respecting the feelings of others. It’s a time of collaboration, sharing and complex learning in different subject areas.

Unless your Cristiano Ronaldo Jr, whose elementary experience is, according to his father, like braving the comment section of any soccer website — the one place where you'll never find co-operation, manners and mutual respect.

The Barcelona and Real Madrid attacking trios of MSN and BBC took to Instagram to show us how they celebrated the New Year. From all of us at The18, we wish you nothing but the best for 2017!

Barcelona's MSN

Lionel Messi

The exorbitant fees that the Chinese Super League has been willing to pay to land the world’s best look like peanuts compared to what one unnamed CSL club was willing to pay Real Madrid and Cristiano Ronaldo to bring the Ballon d’Or winner to East Asia.

Cristiano Ronaldo would like everyone's help choosing a watch, because companies just send him sh*t to wear and then send him money to tweet inane tweets about their products.

Case in point:

The end of the year is approaching. Which @TAGHeuer timepiece should I choose? Sporty or elegant? #DontCrackUnderPressure pic.twitter.com/xuwm2ErjYo