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LONDON. — Cristiano Ronaldo has emerged as the favourite to win Fifa’s  prestigious Ballon d’Or award over rival Lionel Messi following the surprise decision to extend the voting deadline. But it is understood that Ronaldo, who enhanced his case with his superb hat-trick in Portugal’s World Cup play-off win over Sweden on Tuesday night, could boycott the Ballon d’Or ceremony in Zurich on January 13 in protest at comments by Fifa president Sepp Blatter.

The Fifa chief claimed the Real Madrid star ‘spends more time at the hairdresser’ when asked to compare him with Messi, though the Fifa chief did later apologise.

The move to put the voting deadline back to Novmber 29 and allow previous votes to be recast has been taken as a result of a ‘low turnout of votes’.

Ronaldo rose to the occasion in Stockholm on Tuesday night to send Portugal to Brazil and Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s Sweden packing.

The Real Madrid star scored a sublime second-half hat-trick in his side’s 3-2 win.

Ronaldos’s Barcelona rivals Messi has won the trophy for the past four seasons, and had another stellar 2012/13, but it was the Treble-winning Franck Ribery who was favourite for the gong until Ronaldo’s display against Sweden.

Ronaldo, who has scored three hat-tricks in the past month (two for Real Madrid and one for his country) is now in line to collect his second Ballon d’Or at the January ceremony.

Meanwhile, Thiago Silva was left red-faced when the Brazil captain made a hash of his Ballon d’Or voting.

The Paris Saint-Germain centre back was clearly under the impression that he was unable to vote for his countryman Neymar, despite the only rule for voting is that you can not vote for yourself.

In a wide-ranging interview with Globoesporte, Silva discussed his frustration at being unable to vote for his international team-mate.

He also believes he should come in second place to Barcelona’s marquee summer signing and poster boy for the World Cup.

“It was a pity that I could not vote for Brazilians,” Silva was quoted as saying. — Mailonline.