Cristiano Ronaldo was the proud recipient of this season's  Ballon d'Or award after gaining the majority of votes from coaches and captains of international teams, as well as journalists from around the world.

But Football Manager 2014 believe there's a better way of deciding which player in the final three should have actually won the prestigious award - using Sports Interactive's award-winning game.

They put the three shortlisted players - Ronaldo, Messi and Ribery – in the bottom three Championship sides halfway through the season to see if they really could do it “on a wet and windy night in Bolton”; and from there can see who really does deserve to win the Ballon d'Or.

Ronaldo was put into the Barnsley side:

• Barnsley jump from bottom of the table in early January to finish in 15^th place thanks to Ronaldo
• The Portuguese winger scores 17 goals in the second half of the season
• He earns an average rating of 7.57 which is comfortably the best in Barnsley’s squad
• He scores a hat-trick against Millwall and a total of 6 braces
• He also lays on 5 assists for his team-mates
• Ronaldo also helps Barnsley to a 10 game unbeaten run stretching from late March until the end of the season
• His pace and skill lead many teams to play a 5 man defence against Barnsley just to deal with the threat of Ronaldo

Messi was put into the Yeovil side:

• Despite the arrival of Messi in January, Yeovil are relegated on 46 points
• Messi scores 11 goals in the 23 remaining Yeovil fixtures
• His average rating was 8.04 which was the easily best in the league between January and May
• He makes 8 assists and earns 14 Player of the Match awards – again the highest in the league
• Scores all 3 goals in a 3-2 win over Derby as well as a brace against Ipswich
• Yeovil’s defensive frailties are the main reason for their relegation, despite Messi’s best efforts to keep them up
• Messi also struggles to link up with team-mates higher up the pitch – an issue he doesn’t have to deal with at Barcelona – and his pass completion is only 70%, in the bottom half of the team in that area

Ribery went into the Doncaster side:

• Ribery helps Doncaster to a 19^th placed finish, 7 points clear of relegation
• He scores 9 goals in 19 matches
• His average rating of 7.35 is easily the best in Doncaster’s squad
• He makes 6 assists and is named Player of the Match 7 times
• His pass completion percentage (86%) and cross completion (43%) are the highest in the league
• Ribery’s creativity also benefits the rest of the team with Theo Robinson taking his tally to the season to 11 goals, mainly as a result of Ribery’s assists
• Ribery scores all three goals in a 3-1 victory over Millwall and then goes on to score one and set one up against Millwall in the penultimate game of the season

So as you can see, FM14 shows that Ronaldo is indeed the world's best players at the moment. And unfortunately, for Yeovil fans, not even Lionel Messi could keep them in the Championship this season.

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