World Player of the Year

It was a slow weekend for Spanish football, a desperate lull after the excitement of the league inauguration last weekend. On Friday night Spain walked all over Lichtenstein in their first EURO 2012 qualifier and we’ve had to make do with matchday two in La Segunda to keep us busy since then.

Madrid based sports daily Marca ran with a Diego Forlan interview on the front page on Sunday morning. The Uruguayan, who has enjoyed the most successful season of his career so far in winning the UEFA cup with Atletico Madrid and the Golden Boot at the World Cup, was talking up his chances of winning the World Player of the Year award.

Forlan should be congratulated on his excellent campaign, his 28 goals for Atletico in 2009-10 and his five goals for his country in South Africa, but there's no way he's going to win the Golden Ball.

We'll have to wait until January to find out who the eventual winner is. The FIFA World Player of the Year and Golden Ball awards have been amalgamated this season to end the long running confusion over which is which. That means the journalistic based voting of France Football magazine’s Ballon D’Or and the international manager and captain’s choice from the FIFA award will be combined from now on and the announcement will no longer be made in December but will be delayed until the New Year.

I have always been more interested in the FIFA World Player than the Ballon D’Or, mainly because it is an award based on quality rather than form. Future generations will look back and ask, “Who was the best player in the world at that time?” not “Whose club/country was most successful over the course of the season?” That is why I guard against honouring players just because they have starred for a successful team.

That is not to say that the best players in the world will not inspire their teams to success, but there have been occasions, such as Fabio Cannavaro’s nomination in 2006, when a player has won a World Player of the Year trophy solely because their country won the World Cup and there were no other suitable candidates.

[2006 was something of an anomaly: Zinedine Zidane would have been an obvious choice for the trophy but FIFA could hardly pay tribute to the France midfielder after his notorious dismissal for head butting Marco Materazzi in the World Cup final.] 

In general, the FIFA World Player of the Year award has done well in categorising the best players in the world year by year since its inception in 1991. Here is the list of winners and there is no doubt in my mind that the very best players of the last two decades are all named here:

1991 – Lothar Matthaus     2001 – Luis Figo
1992 – Marco van Basten  2002 – Ronaldo 
1993 – Roberto Baggio      2003 – Zinedine Zidane
1994 – Romario                  2004 – Ronaldinho
1995 – George Weah        2005 – Ronaldinho
1996 – Ronaldo                  2006 – Fabio Cannavaro
1997 – Ronaldo                  2007 – Kaka
1998 – Zinedine Zidane    2008 – Cristiano Ronaldo
1999 – Rivaldo                    2009 – Lionel Messi
2000 – Zinedine Zidane     2010 -

The winner of the prize in 2010 will depend not just on FIFA but on journalists as well; let’s hope the tradition of honouring the best carries on, and we don’t see further examples of the strange choices the Ballon D’Or has thrown up in the recent past, such as Matthias Sammer, Igor Belanov and, sorry chaps, Michael Owen.

                       My 2010 nominees for the World Player of the Year

Diego Forlan (Atletico Madrid / Uruguay)

As I mentioned above, Diego Forlan has had an exceptional year and does enjoy the advantage of having performed well for a “smaller” club and country throughout the duration of the season. Forlan has excelled in difficult circumstances as Atletico and Uruguay have both been underdogs for a lot of the time in their respective competitions. Is he the best of the best, though? Obviously not. 

Diego Milito (Inter Milan / Argentina)

Diego Milito is an outsider for this award after playing second fiddle to Gonzalo Higuain as Argentina’s central striker at the World Cup. His domestic season, however, was nothing short of spectacular as he played the lone striking role and scored 30 goals for Inter Milan in their treble winning campaign. His great performances and goals against Barcelona in the semi-final and Bayern Munich in the final of the Champions League helped him scoop UEFA’s Champions League Player of the Season award ahead of fellow Inter Milan colleagues Julio Cesar, Maicon and Wesley Sneijder. 

Wesley Sneijder (Inter Milan / Holland)

Wesley Sneijder had arguably the most successful season of any player on this list. He was a beaten finalist in the World Cup where he pulled the strings as Holland’s central playmaker and he was Inter Milan’s key man as they won a historic treble of Coppa Italia, Serie A and Champions League under Jose Mourinho. All of that probably makes him an early favourite for the World Player of the Year award. And to think, Sneijder was discarded by Real Madrid last summer as surplus to requirements in Manuel Pellegrini’s midfield. Florentino Perez, and not Chilean coach Pellegrini, deserves the credit for that small error in judgement.

Xavi Hernandez (Barcelona / Spain)

Xavi is one of the most underrated players of his generation because what he does with a football is rarely described as spectacular. He does not score many goals or beat his opponent with pace or skill but, what he does do, he does better than anyone else in the world. That is, pass the ball, keep possession and link the defence and attack. He is the dynamo at the heart of both Barcelona and Spain’s attractive, free-flowing style and the fact that they have shown to be the most effective two teams in both club and international football over the past two or three years is in large part down to him. Barcelona enjoyed another fantastic domestic campaign in 2009-10, even if they were beaten by Inter Milan in the Champions League, and Xavi was Spain’s most consistent performer on the path to World Cup glory.

David Villa (Valencia / Spain)

David Villa had a scintillating World Cup, scoring more than half of Spain’s goals before going on to lift the trophy in South Africa. Villa is arguably the most effective goal scorer in Europe at the moment and is expected to lead the ‘Pichichi’ chase with his new team Barcelona this season. His run in the Europa League with Valencia in 2009-10, however, might count against him. All the other players I have named here appeared in the Champions League last season and, although Villa hit 28 goals in all competitions for Los Che during the campaign, an early exit in Europe’s second competition and 3rd place in La Liga does not really compete with the feats of the other nominees. If the Asturian hitman emerges from Lionel Messi’s shadow this season, he could be a contender for the 2011 award.

Lionel Messi (Barcelona / Argentina)

Those who claim Messi had a poor World Cup obviously didn’t watch any of Argentina’s first four games in South Africa in which he was quite unstoppable. Maradona’s worthy successor was unable to prevent Germany from demolishing his team in the quarter-finals, but his quality transcends one disappointing outing. The Barca forward scored 47 goals in all competitions for his club last season and put in some jaw-dropping performances along the way. Messi is undoubtedly the best player in the world at the moment, perhaps the best ever, and he deserves to be honoured on that basis alone.