Vivianne Miedema critical of Ballon d’Or, says she didn’t ‘feel appreciated’ as women’s footballer at ceremony

Arsenal forward Vivianne Miedema has criticised the lack of gender equality at the Ballon d’Or and believes there should be more awards for women.

Of the seven awards at the 2022 Ballon d’Or ceremony only one – the Ballon d’Or Feminin – was dedicated to women’s football.

The Club of the Year award is across men’s and women’s teams, while the inaugural Socrates Award went to Bayern Munich’s Sadio Mane for his charity work.

Miedema has been nominated for the Ballon d’Or Feminin on three occasions, and attended the ceremony for the first time this year.

“But being there I think – I’m going to be really honest here because I might as well. I didn’t feel appreciated as a woman footballer being there.

“I think if they want to have women involved, they have to do it in a different way. They’ve had five or six different awards for the men’s game and where we’ve only had one award for the women’s one. If they want to make it an equal thing they should be handing out the same awards to men’s and women’s football.”

Arsenal’s Beth Mead finished second and attended alongside her partner Miedema.

A caption of Mead and Miedema at the event caused a stir as it didn’t name Mead, only

.

“Waking up the next morning and going through everything, that picture popped up and I think that kind of states the issue we’ve been speaking about the night before,” said Miedema.

“We’ve got the No. 2 from that year – which arguably should have been No. 1 – turning up to the event being my guest.

“That would obviously never happen if [Lionel] Messi and Neymar would be walking next to each other. We obviously made a joke about it, I still joke about it right now with Beth sometimes, but that shows you that there’s so many more improvements to be made in the game.

“We laugh about it right now but I think over the whole event it needs to be organised so much better and it needs to be so much more equal than it has been.”

Miedema took a break from football in November to “rest and recharge”.

The 26-year-old says players should not be “ashamed” to take time off.

“We’re always expected to go, go, go,” she said.

“A lot of players probably don’t feel the freedom to say ‘OK, I do need a break’. I’ve been in a fortunate position to ask for it, to feel confident enough to ask for it, which looking back I should have done way earlier.

“If it’s not possible to deliver what you need to do at that moment, please take a break or please work with someone on it. Speak about it and don’t feel ashamed. Just take your time and it will come back at one point.”