Vinicius Jr. reacts to Ballon d’Or slight

Real Madrid star Vinicius Jr. has broken his silence after being snubbed by the Ballon d'Or panel on Monday, and warned: "They're not ready."

The Brazilian was widely expected to take home France Football's award for the world's best male football player.

Hours ahead of a star-studded gala, however, several outlets such as RMC, citing anonymous sources, reported that the 24-year-old would finish runner-up to Manchester City and Spain midfielder Rodri.

Subsequent reports explained that Real Madrid would not send a delegation to the award ceremony in the French capital, which meant that Carlo Ancelotti wasn't present to receive an award for best coach and nobody could collect an award Los Blancos won for best team either.

As FC Barcelona's Lamine Yamal won the Kopa Trophy for the best player under the age of 21 and Aitana Bonmati scooped a second consecutive female Ballon d'Or, Rodri did indeed claim the top male prize and was the first Spanish man to do so since 1960 ahead of a second-placed Vinicius.

Minutes after the Euro 2024 champion had been crowned, Vinicius posted on X, formerly known as Twitter and wrote, "I'll do it 10x [ten times] if I have to. They're not ready," in Portuguese.

As explained by Brazilian journalist Josué Seixas, who has interviewed Vinicius twice, the first part of his message could possibly be a reference to a live performance of a song by popular São Paulo rap group Racionais MC's named A Vida É Desafio (Life is a Challenge), which a popular Brazilian account referenced on X earlier on Monday in relation to the Ballon d'Or snub.

Before Edi Rock takes over and raps the song solo, the group's leader Mano Brown introduces it by saying, "You have to believe... Since the beginning, your mother said as such: 'Son, because you're black you have to be two times better'.

"So after a few years, I thought, 'How do you do it two times better, when you're at least 100 times behind? Because of slavery, racism, history, traumas, for everything that happened,'" Mano Brown adds.

Rather than play hard done to, it seems as though Vinicius will use this setback as fuel to prove his critics wrong and try to finally become the first Brazilian since Kaka in 2007 to win the Ballon d'Or in the coming years.

It could be that he is vowing to perform ten times better and believes that the world isn't ready for what he is set to deliver.