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#1 He was outperformed in other competitions
Despite winning the Champions League Golden Boot for the sixth straight season, Ronaldo relatively underperformed in the league with Real Madrid, scoring 26 league goals (his joint-lowest league return since his arrival at Real Madrid in 2009).
He had a slow start to his league campaign last season. A suspension picked up for shoving the referee during Real's Spanish Super Cup victory over Barcelona coupled with injury problems meant the usually potent Ronaldo was just on one La Liga goal by mid-November.
Desperation set in, and Ronaldo began to fire shots at will, most times to ridiculous outcomes. After 12 matches, he had scored just four league goals from a continent high of 55 shots.
In his defence though, his form in the league improved and he began 2018 with the best start to any calendar year in his career and rallied back to end the season with a respectable 26 goals, only behind eternal rival Lionel Messi, which was inconceivable halfway into the season.
In contrast, Mo Salah had a phenomenal campaign on both the domestic scene and the continent, scoring 32 goals for Liverpool in the Premier League which broke the long-standing record of most goals in a 38-game season and won him the Golden Boot as well as the PFA and PWA Player of the Season awards.
He also starred in the Champions League, contributing 10 goals and 5 assists in Liverpool's unlikely march to the final of the Champions League where an unfortunate injury early on robbed him of the chance to influence proceedings.
At the World Cup, Ronaldo started off his campaign with a splendid hat-trick for Portugal against Spain and scored the winner in a narrow 1-0 victory over Morocco to help his nation qualify for the second round. However, he was hapless, looking on as Edinson Cavani ran the show with a brace to condemn Portugal to a 2-1 loss and elimination in the round-of-16.
Luka Modric, on the other hand, had an exceptional performance at the Mundial in Russia and was named Player of the tournament.
Despite the overemphasis on Champions League performances throughout the history of the award, according to UEFA's official website, the Players are judged on their performances in all competitions – domestic, continental and international - by a jury of sports journalists representing each of the UEFA member national associations, and coaches of clubs in the previous season's UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League group stages.
According to the criteria, and factoring performances in all the competitions together, Ronaldo's rivals for the award performed better than him, and stands them in good stead to win the prize ahead of him.
