Luis Suarez claims he will never be ‘marketable’ enough to win the Ballon d’Or following Cristiano Ronaldo triumph
Barcelona star says football's most important individual award is not a priority to him as long as the team is winning
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LUIS SUAREZ has hit out at the Ballon d'Or after being overlooked for the award again.
The Uruguayan says players have to have "more marketing" than him to be in with a chance of winning the prize.
Suarez was one of the front runners for the award earlier in the season when he became the first player other than Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi to be La Liga top scorer since his fellow Uruguayan Diego Forlan in 2009.
But Ronaldo and Messi still came top of the voting by a distance with 3rd place Antoine Griezmann getting more than twice as many votes as Suarez.
The former Liverpool striker commented on the award afterwards, saying: "I prioritise the group and the collective. I don't give these much importance and I always say there are players with more marketing than me."
Suarez is 29 and his outstanding career has always been overshadowed by having Ronaldo and Messi play in the same generation, as well as his own misbehaviour.
Three separate biting incidents with Ajax, Liverpool and Uruguay, as well as a charge of racism against Patrice Evra, means some will never remember the striker for his goals.
But he says as long as he is helping his club to win trophies, he doesn't care about the opinion of any judging panel.
Suarez told Uruguay's Diario Ovacion: "On a general level, the balance for the club [Barcelona] is positive.
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"We won the league, the Copa del Rey and that's what Barcelona aspires to because it's the most important team, for me, in Spain. But there's also the sensation that we could have won the Champions League."
And he laid out his goals for 2017, saying: "I would like to have a good year, finish it well as a collective, fighting for everything with the club and qualifying directly for the World Cup with Uruguay, something we've not done for a while [having had to go through the playoffs]."
This isn't the first time Suarez has hit out at the Ballon d'Or.
In a similar interview in October, he said the European Golden Shoe, which he won last season, was a more important award.
Suarez commented: “I’ve earned all the awards I’ve been given. The Golden Shoe is for scoring the most goals and there’s no option for people to take that away from me."