These awards are historically full of wholes and are created off journalists voting appeal. And in todays media, you have football pages that fiercely push for PR of X players, like Fabrizio Romano and such. Its a joke really, even some of the players yesterday probably couldnt wait to leave that event given their attitude

Some other examples:

Deco lost in 2004, after winning the CL, the Portuguese League and being the best player in the tournaments. Reached the Euros final. Shevchenko won because of Serie A and G/A

Ronaldinho lost in 2006, after winning the CL and being the best player in the tournment, aswell with better G/A. Cannavaro won because of the World Cup

Ribery lost in 2013, after winning the treble. Ronaldo won it because of G/A and his performances against Sweden in the play-offs because FIFA was worried about their image after Blatter comments on Cristiano days previously to that

Both Messi and Ronaldo had way better G/A than Modric in 2018. Ronaldo won the Champions League, being the best player in the tournament and had a better World Cup perfomance than Messi. Modric didnt even scored his way in the knock-outs, only 1 assist, and won the damn award because he was a finalist lol