Ronaldinho’s Footprints Are Now on the Promenade of Champions

Have you ever heard of the Golden Foot award? I absolutely hadn’t, until this morning when I read on ONTD that Ronaldinho had won the 2009 edition. Which led me to do some searching and find out exactly what this thing is.

Random, is what it is. But also kind of interesting. Each year, the Golden Foot is awarded to a player aged 29 and over. It’s a career award, so it’s not based on recent form like the Ballon d’Or or the FIFA World Player of the Year awards. Which makes this year’s winner seem much more sensible. According to the official website’s explanation: “The winner is chosen out of a ten nominees list decided by a jury consisting of the Golden Foot media partners representatives and of the fans from all over the world who give their preferential vote through the official site.”

Ronaldinho beat David Beckham, Thierry Henry, Raul, Gigi Buffon, Luis Figo,. Ryan Giggs, Steven Gerrard, Francesco Totti and David Trezeguet in the vote and so gets to leave his footprint on The Champions Promenade in Monte Carlo, a sort of walk of fame of past winners (the award has been given out since 2003) and also the “legends” that are invited to add their footprint to the Promenade each year.

Once you’ve won the Golden Foot, you can’t win again. The “legends” invited to add their footprints this year are: Polish attacker Zbigniew Boniek, Ukrainian forward Oleg Blokhin, Scorpion-tastic Colombian keeper René Higuita, German striker Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Brazilian left-back Nilton Santos.

Here’s Ronaldinho leaving his mark:

Seems to me that the award given out to a famous player like Ronaldinho each year is designed to draw attention to the Champions Promenade, which is basically a football walk of fame. Random as it may seem, it’s a damn fine idea. If I’m ever in Monte Carlo then I’m definitely visiting to get a look at the footprints of the world’s greatest footballers.

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Category: World Football