Thoughts on this Year’s Men’s Awards

Thoughts on this Year’s Men’s Awards

Before I get started, I should put out a disclaimer that I do think individual awards are needed in football. Its all great to be a functioning tool in a team’s system, that at the end of the day may not do anything particularly noticeable, but helps the team perform at the top level’s efficiently, a certain Sergi Roberto and Joshua Kimmich come to mind. However, to truly stand head and shoulders above the elite in world football at the end of a given period should be recognized with something tangible. Albeit these awards may have suffered with respect to their stature due to the era of Messi vs Ronaldo where it seemed like for so long it was not an award just anyone could win; but rather it’s a testament to the level at which these giants of the game were performing at.

For the first time since Kaká won the Ballon D’or in 2008, someone other than the afore mentioned superstars has won a major football award. Luka Modric won the UEFA men’s Player of the Year award ahead of Mohamed Salah and Ronaldo. What made that award and now the FIFA Men’s award odd is that Lionel Messi was not even nominated despite the fact that he was the top scorer throughout Europe which makes one wonder, what does it really take to win one of these prestigious accolades?

Now for those who do not know each award has its own way of choosing their nominees and eventual winners, including the Ballon D’or. The Ballon D’or which is operated by FranceFootball has only “respected” football journalist as part of the voting process (most of the Journalists will be from France, England, Spain, Germany and France football media outlets.). Since their separation from FIFA they now use a pool of 30 top players who journalists can vote for. UEFA Men's Player of the Year Award has 55 journalists selected by the European Sports Media Association as well as the 80 managers from the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League as part of the voting process. Lastly, the winner the FIFA Men’s Player of the Year award is chosen by the coaches and captains of national teams as well as by international media representatives invited by FIFA.

Regardless of the voting process its all still subjected to bias because then what is the standard, is it goals? Assists? Trophies? Big game performances? This year was the World Cup so how much does that matter? Its all subjective regardless of how anyone watches it. However, the exclusion of the Messi is not what has pushed me to write about the game’s highest individual honors but rather the continued trend of only attacking players. Sure, Manuel Neuer was a finalist a few years ago but that was an anomaly. I sympathize as to why its easy to highlight attackers as they do the much more glorious aspects of the game, the stuff to make you stand on your feet in awe but it shouldn’t take away from how important defenders are, even if some are arguing it’s a dying art. Same goes for ‘keepers, as with the position ever evolving its as if ball playing goalkeepers are taken for granted nowadays. The value placed on players doing the so called "darker arts" of the games are not given the same recognition.

My thoughts would be to add a type of point system to the statistics produced by the selected 20-30 players to make it a much more holistic approaching to the decision making process. For example, and just an example, say shot on target for a forward, tackle won for a defender, dribble completed by a midfielder and shot saved by a goalkeeper all equaled the same amount of points. Now, though these specific actions may or may not be of equal weighting, its an example of how the system could work to give all players a fair chance within their respective roles to win the individual awards. I do understand that statistics, however, do not tell the whole story so this maybe should not be implemented as a means of judging the players solely. Therefore, something similar could be used to partially evaluate the players in addition to the involvement of the respected journalist and managers as a means for the most unbiased results. I just think that we are moving in such a direction in football to remove as many decisions from the hands of men with game-line technology and now with VAR in order to avoid human error then maybe we should also begin doing this in rewarding the top performers? Just a thought, I could be totally wrong, and I am open to discussion.

Another minor annoyance I have is that the Ballon D’or in particular is based on a period that is almost a calendar year in a sport which doesn’t operate on the same timeline. Weird eh? To close, on an ironically biased note, I personally, think Raphaël Varane should be amongst these nominees given the phenomenal year he has had. Has been an integral part of the Real Madrid campaign’s in the UEFA Champions League for the past three years and has definitely been a rock at the back for France in this year’s World Cup campaign. Again, open to discussion!