He did months back when whole of Italy (and us) reacted to not making the list, he thanked everyone for the support and thought it was a strange decision.
Btw, Rakitic is exactly the kind of player who deserves to make such lists, does the silent work amazingly and been very creative coupled with strong work ethic/defensive stability. Despite playing for Barca, fairly unhyped because he plays behind magic attack. Quite a fair bit of inferior season players to him that made that list.