Cristiano Ronaldo has been surprisingly un-Cristiano Ronaldo in his Ballon d’Or prediction

Cristiano Ronaldo is being modest and we don't feel the least bit comfortable about it.

The reigning Ballon d'Or holder has been asked to predict who will walk away with the award at January's ceremony and he doesn't pick himself to retain the honour. Speaking to Jonathan Ross in an episode of the chat show which airs on Saturday, Ronaldo has given his backing to his biggest rival to walk away with the gong.

"To be honest I think Messi is going to win this year because this kind of trophy, it depends on votes. You win competitions, you win Champions League you win the league in terms of individual. I did probably the best season of my career which is good and I was the highest scorer in Europe [but] it’s all about votes, it’s difficult and to be honest I’m not very worried about that because as I said many times, I never thought I’d win three times to be honest."

Ronaldo has won the award for the last two years on the bounce but is backing Messi to pip him to the post this time around. We could actually foresee Neymar breaking the duopoly this time as he has been terrific in replacing Leo while the Argentine has been injured. There's an argument to me made for Luis Suarez, too, but Fifa are sort of pretending that he doesn't exist anymore.