Antoine Griezmann has been on the losing side in major finals for club and country this season.
Antoine Griezmann believes he will lose out to Cristiano Ronaldo for this year's Ballon d'Or award as a result of France being beaten 1-0 by Portugal in the Euro 2016 final.
Griezmann, 25, finished with the Golden Boot
as the tournament's top scorer. However, the French striker failed to
add to his six goals in the hosts' extra-time defeat at the Stade de
France on Sunday.
The Atletico Madrid forward saw a first-half
header wonderfully saved by Portugal goalkeeper Rui Patricio, before
heading a much easier chance over the bar later in the game.
The
final had been billed in some quarters as a battle between Griezmann and
Real Madrid star Ronaldo, 31, with the winner expected to claim the
Ballon d'Or award as the world's best player.
But Griezmann said
that the prospect of winning the individual award was not something he
had thought about prior to Sunday's game.
"No, it will come if it has to come," Griezmann said. "Am I still in with a chance of winning? Cristiano Ronaldo won the biggest competitions. I think that that's it -- it's done."
Ronaldo had already won the Champions League
with Real this season, scoring the winning penalty in a shootout
against Griezmann's Atletico in May. But the Real Madrid forward made
little impact in the Euro 2016 final as he was taken off on a stretcher
25 minutes into the game after failing to recover from a rough early tackle by France's Dimitri Payet.
And
ex-France international Christophe Dugarry said he thought at the time
that Ronaldo's withdrawal with a knee injury was going to be the turning
point of the match.
"Yes and I wasn't the only one," Dugarry told Le Parisien. "The French players thought so too.
"Unconsciously, they maybe believed that the hardest part was done. But no.
"Success was on Portugal's side. We understood that when we saw Eder's goal.
"He
shot without looking at the goal, almost to get rid of the ball and
without necessarily believing that he would score. And it went in. In
the end, it's a super goal and a stroke of genius."
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