Lucas Leiva

Jose Mourinho has declared that his star man, Cristiano Ronaldo, is more worthy of the World Player of the year award for 2012 than Lionel Messi. Messi has won the award the last three years, but Mourinho has tipped Ronaldo as more deserving of the title when it is next awarded.

Mourinho’s claims are based around the impact that Ronaldo has had on Real’s La Liga success this year. Despite Messi outscoring Ronaldo, the argument goes that scoring 46 league goals in a team that won the title should be enough to win the Ballon d’Or award. His impact was enough to guide Real to the league title, whereas Barca and Messi finished a distant second and their only hope of silverware in 2012 comes in the Copa Del Rey final next week.

The Special One declared that “Cristiano has to win the Ballon d’Or, not because he has been the top goalscorer, he was that already last season, but because his goals have delivered a title.”

He went on to claim that Messi’s 50 goals, as with Ronaldo’s 42 last year(when he won the top scorer award), “weren’t worth anything” as they did not contribute towards a league title. His argument has ground in that Ronaldo was indeed top scorer in La Liga last season, and outscored Messi in all competitions too. Yet it was Messi who ran out with the Ballon d’Or, in a season that he and Barca picked up the La Liga and Champions Leageu titles.

Mourinho himself has now won seven league titles in four different countries. He believes that this season’s efforts have been the finest achievement of his career to date. With Spain seen as having Europe’s top two sides at the moment, as well as the world’s top two players it is understandable why. To overcome Barca must make any victory ever sweeter.

After being confirmed to be out of action until the end of the season, Lucas Leiva has undergone an ankle surgery to repair the anterior cruciate ligament damage he sustained during the match against Chelsea.

Lucas played in the 2-0 win over Chelsea, but he sustained a horrible injury in the process. Despite making into the Carling cup semi finals following the win, one can certainly be confident that Kenny Dalglish would have not played him in hindsight. He has been praising Lucas Leiva lot in recent weeks by saying that the recent form of Liverpool has to be attributed to the Brazilian.

He seems to have come of age of late after performing poorly under the reign of Rafa Benitez. Further, the departure of Mascherano to Barcelona also seems to have helped his cause. The regular run of games that he now gets in the midfield has been one of the main reasons for Liverpool to not feel the absence of Steven Gerrard in recent weeks. However, the injury that he sustained in the match against Chelsea is a crucial one and it will rule him out for the season. Liverpool confirmed that the Brazilian had indeed undergone a surgery and will be starting his recuperation period immediately.

"Liverpool confirmed this afternoon that Lucas had successfully undergone surgery in Brazil on the Anterior Cruciate Ligament injury he sustained at Chelsea last week. LFC medical staff were present during the procedure. Lucas will now begin an agreed rehabilitation programme which will be overseen by the Club's medical team," read a statement on Liverpool's official website. A number of his teammates have been tweeting about the fact that they will be missing him for the next few months, which will be crucial because Liverpool need to qualify for the Champions League.