http://www.fifa.com/the-best-fifa-f...-world11-2017-shortlist-revealed-2908322.html lists the nominees. Here are how many players each club had: Real Madrid: 13 Barcelona: 8.5* Bayern Munich: 8 (meaning that over half of the 55 nominees came from three clubs) Manchester United: 5 Paris Saint-Germain: 4.5* Juventus: 4* Chelsea: 3.5* Atletico Madrid: 3 Arsenal: 2 Liverpool: 1 Tottenham: 1 AC Milan: 0.5* Everton: 0.5* AS Monaco: 0.5* * If a player played for two clubs, I gave them 0.5 each because I didn't want to look at individual situations. Here's a breakdown by league: La Liga: 24.5 English Premier League: 13 Bundesliga: 8 Ligue 1: 5 Serie A: 4.5
The best award's top 23 was actually a bit better: http://www.fifa.com/the-best-fifa-football-awards/best-fifa-mens-player/index.html Finalists: Messi Neymar Ronaldo Shortlist: Aubameyang Bonucci Buffon Carvajal Dybala Griezmann Hazard Ibrahimovic Iniesta Kane Kante Kroos Lewandowski Marcelo Modric Navas Neuer Ramos Sanchez Suarez Iniesta and Ibrahimovic are pretty questionable but the rest of it isn't too bad.
Interesting to contrast that list with the Ballon d'Or shortlist https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/oct/09/harry-kane-shortlisted-2017-ballon-dor Although they clearly didn't get the memo that Iniesta should always be nominated.
Does this include the Euros or no? Otherwise I'm not sure why players like Bale are on here. These lists are all about popularity.
Iniesta and Ibrahimovic have no business being in this list, and should be replaced by Thiago and Casemiro.
Thiago was in particular important in the first half of 2016-17, after that his form and importance tailed off. In the second half it was simply Robben against the all the difficult opponents (Real Madrid, Dortmund, Leipzig etc.), and since the start of this season (so far) it is Lewandowski.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Borussia Dortmund), Karim Benzema (Real Madrid), Leonardo Bonucci (Milan), Gianluigi Buffon (Juventus), Edinson Cavani (PSG), Philippe Coutinho (Liverpool), Kevin de Bruyne (Man City), David de Gea (Man Utd), Paulo Dybala (Juventus), Edin Dzeko (Roma), Radamel Falcao (Monaco), Antoine Griezmann (Atlético Madrid), Eden Hazard (Chelsea), Mats Hummels (Bayern Munich), Isco (Real Madrid), Harry Kane (Tottenham), N’Golo Kanté (Chelsea), Toni Kroos (Real Madrid), Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich), Sadio Mané (Liverpool), Marcelo (Real Madrid), Kylian Mbappé (PSG), Dries Mertens (Napoli), Lionel Messi (Barcelona), Luka Modric (Real Madrid), Neymar (PSG), Jan Oblak (Atlético Madrid), Sergio Ramos (Real Madrid), Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid), Luis Suárez (Barcelona). Of these I think Benzema and Coutinho are particularly questionable. I'm not sure De Gea had his best year last season either. I am presuming the Falcao inclusion is based to a significant extent on his great start this season which I think makes some sense. Bernardo Silva was France's best player last season but is yet to make an impact at Man City.
Manchester United allowed 29 goals in 2016-2017, which was their fewest in the six complete seasons they have had de Gea.
Yeah, because United's defence was a lot better/the team was a lot more defensive. His saves per game (2.1) was the lowest of his time at United. Basically, United's previous poor form gave him more opportunity to show his quality. Last year was the first for 3 years that he wasn't United's player of the season.
OK, so we had a bit of a mare and forgot to include last season's Premier League ratings 🙈 here are the 2017 Ballon d'WhoScored Nominees pic.twitter.com/QaDg0vZEie— WhoScored.com (@WhoScored) October 9, 2017 WhoScored's top picks for the years so far.
My own 23 would be: Aubameyang, Bonucci, Buffon, Carvajal, Dybala, De Bruyne, Eriksen, Hazard, Isco, Kane, Kante, Kroos, Lewandowski, Marcelo, Mertens, Messi, Modric, Neymar, Ramos, Robben, Ronaldo, Suarez, Thiago. But it's hard going. Messi head and shoulders the number 1. Modric should be in the top 3.
Last night they held The Best awards in London. As predicted Cristiano Ronaldo won and it was by a landslide. This is how everyone voted: http://resources.fifa.com/mm/docume.../02/91/68/49/faward_menplayer2017_neutral.pdf Just noticed as well that Arturo Vidal got a number of votes despite not being on the shortlist.
Without looking to dignify these awards too much, you do wonder what some of the voters are thinking. Does Messi miss out on some people's top 3s because they are looking to share it around a bit or because they genuinely don't think he's been that good.
Also how Cristiano and Messi refuse to vote for each other, for a few years going now. Although Cristiano did name Xavi as #1 in 2010, and in 2009 Simao was voting in his place (as did Bruno Alves in 2011) and he had Messi at #1 while team captain Mascherano had Messi not in his top three. Think the 'spreading around' was more something of earlier years (at Ballon d'Or), occasionally being an explicit instruction by France Football (which voters followed or did not follow). After a player had won one or two of these things.
Maradona's votes when he was national team manager also intriguing. 2008: Cristiano, Zlatan, Adebayor 2009: Drogba, Rooney, Zlatan But no, Messi and Cristiano never voted for each other. The closest being Xavi at #1 in 2010 by Cristiano.
Which is one of the reasons that these awards are highly imperfect. There is sometimes a snobbish feeling to look at the votes of the coach of Burundi or the captain of Vanatu and ask how are they qualified. But look at Messi's votes. He chose Iniesta (the least deserving player on the shortlist) as the 2nd best.
I wouldn't want a system where only the top fifty (or pick another number) of countries got votes. Another possibility would be to give the top countries more votes, but there were 459 combined captains, coaches, and media who voted without doing that. I'm not saying all voters are qualified, but none of us know personally how often the coach of Burundi has watched the top clubs play. Furthermore, it would be strange if the fan component was open to people in countries whose captain, coach, and media didn't get votes.
Well so far the top nations' voters have done nothing to show they are more qualified. In fact, by and large, we've seen that they vote for their own players/teammates.
http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2017/200/en/ Sporting Club de Portugal (alma mater of Cristiano Ronaldo) the #1 most productive training club from outside the major countries.
I'm going to type all the ballots in a spreadsheet. Separately, I'll look at the subsets of ballots from countries with the Top 15 leagues in UEFA and ballots from the Top 32 in the October 2017 FIFA Rankings to see how those ballots compare to all the ballots.
messi has clearly been the best player from january to now. the question is, what is considered more important, the 2 months that CR7 performed at a high level in the champions league or the 7+ months of consistency that came from Messi. albeit CR7s season depends on 2 months it was against top level opponents. but that`s CR7s only case. had it not been for the 5 or so games, he would be lucky to be in the top 10.
I dont think consitency is that highly valuable specially when you’ve failed to win any throphies. See Alves for example.. he was in beast mode for the last two months in the champions and also the French super cup and made the best XI team but overall Carvajal was the most consistent right back. Scoring goals in final and semifinal add more weight than scoring more goals consitently against non competite teams. Messi didnt do much (in comparison to Cristiano) against PSG nor Juve and that is IMO what some of these voters were considering.