Beth Mead has hit out at the poor treatment she and fellow nominees received at the Ballon d'Or ceremony last year.
The Arsenal and England star attended the glitzy awards show in Paris last October, finishing second in the women's player category. But she has now described the attendance of her and her fellow female professionals as a "tick box" exercise.
Mead was runner-up to Barcelona star Alexia Putellas who took home the main award. Chelsea's Sam Kerr was third. But speaking on the Boots, Balls and Bras podcast Mead, who is still recovering from a season-ending ACL injury, said she preferred the recent FIFA Best Awards, where she finished third.
"It was an honour to go to both," Mead said. "But I much preferred the Best Awards, I thought the Ballon d'Or was a token Ballon d’Or for women's football - and that’s all it was.
"The set up wasn’t great. Alexia (Putellas) went up, they asked her a couple of question and off she went.
"In between that they did Lewandowski top scorer, goalkeeper of the year - no female goalkeeper of the year - and a community award. They did three of four awards between the female Ballon d'Or and the men's Ballon d'Or.
"And the at the end it was Benzema who won, his full family was on stage taking pictures with him, all the journalists, and Alexia was sat on the front seat as if she wasn’t even there."
Mead attended the ceremony with partner and teammate Viv Miedema who was also in the running. But when snapped together on the Paris red carpet before the show, Miedema was incorrectly labelled as Mead's "guest" in the caption by the organisers.
The Arsenal forward added: "It’s such a prestigious award (the Ballon d'Or) but then, it was a tick box to have women there but they weren’t doing it right.
"At the FIFA Best, they did everything aligned. They did it all together so it was so much better."
Mead was the top scorer and Player of the Tournament as England won Euro 2022 last summer, the Lionesses first ever major trophy. The Sunderland-born forward subsequently won BBC Sports Personality of the Year and was named BBC Women's Footballer of the Year.
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