Because I apparently have a lot of time on my hands, and for those who care: Because someone wondered aloud in the other Ballon D'Or thread, I tabulated how many points each player in the top 10 received from the captains and coaches of FIFA Top 50 teams *only* (rankings as of August 2012). Obviously, it's strictly a back-of-the-envelope calculation (i.e. I counted it by hand and rounded percents up), but, hey, it's more stats for thought. N.B. For whatever reason, six of the top 50 teams (Argentina, Chile, Chinese Taipei, Korea DPR, Papua New Guinea, and Thailand) were not featured in the tallies - spoiled ballots, perhaps? Anyways: 1. Wambach 195 out of 801 total points = 24% 2. Sinclair 109/801 = 14% 3. Morgan 92/801 = 11% 4. Sawa 76/801 = 9% 5. Abily 75/801 = 9% 6. Miyama 72/801 = 9% 7. Marta 56/801 = 7% 8. Fukumoto 49/801 = 6% 9. Lloyd 44/801 = 6% 10. Rapinoe 33/801 = 4%
What I notice is that US players combined were between 43 and 45% of the total, depending on whether you count everyone or just the top group. That says US soccer is in really good shape since our U23 team could beat the senior team and there are a bunch of college players who are better too!
Interesting that Sinclair does so much better with people who actually might have seen her play. Korea DPR may have lost voting rights when they got suspended or may not have bothered because they got suspended.
And Marta won the Swedish league in assist with twice as many as anyone except her teammate Madeleaine Edlund (who mannaged one more than half of Martas) and we do not use the US way for assist so there are at most one assits and normaly considearbly fever assist than goals in a game. So she is playing CM and doing that very well setting up others for goals. Counting points, (goals and assits added together what traditionally used to be what mattered in Sweden) Marta was first in Sweden 2012 edging out Mittag with one.
And yet she did not win any awards in the league. Clearly times have changed, the voters for those awards must not have used those traditional measurements?
The problem with this theory of Marta's play for Tyreso carrying the day isnt substantiated by the vote. If u look at the vote of the European captains and coaches, the one u would think would be most attuned to Marta's success in the Swedish League, there is little support at all. The old Swedish coach had her second. Finland and Portugal named her first. That's pretty much it. Ur not going to tell me the captains and coaches of France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, England, etc dont know what's going on in the Swedish league. Most of Marta's support came from nations outside the top tier of women's football.
That would be the conclusion I'd draw from the polls. The other being that Christine Sinclair, in contrast, got very little support from those nations.
Nobody remembers who finishes second guys. Well, should say not most people. So no use fretting over it and this not a new issue. The same phenomena happened with Prinz. It's just symptomatic of the fact the women's game is still developing in many places. Hopefully this will change over time. But it is what it is.
Sorry Jan, I find you to be a very reasonable poster. I misunderstood your use of used to be. I thought you meant it in voting for women's POTY which hasn't been around 20 years.