Not only that, but it's now possible to make B, C etc. teams, although it gets less accurate the further down the food chain you go. According to this method Dybala is ranked only #9 among the forwards this past season. Trifon Ivanov got into a team of the month even though he had only 2 votes in total, BTW. I thought about including all sorts of extra information like club, nationality, detailed position, and how the votes broke down each month, but decided in the end it wasn't worth the effort. Maybe if I get super-bored sometime. The number of votes each winner received each month are mentioned in the magazines and websites, though. Voter pool was inconsistent, so different time periods can't really be compared. There were some months where one magazine or another hadn't felt like voting at all. Also, the number of ESM members has almost doubled. That's why Messi has such crazy numbers compared to 90s players. That's one of the reasons I split everything into 5-year periods instead of combining everything. Yeah, the impact of certain matches is a weakness in the ESM-system. You'll never guess how Carlos Alberto received his 03-04 votes. The same season Hildebrand got his crazy numbers from the first two months only. Russian league players only received votes when they won a European trophy. The Russian league gets ZERO love from ESM.
1996-7 Actual team: Peruzzi; Angloma, Ferrara, Hierro, Roberto Carlos; Luis Enrique, Seedorf, Del Piero, Raul; Ronaldo, Suker Revised team: Peruzzi; Angloma, Ferrara, Hierro, Roberto Carlos; Luis Enrique, Seedorf, Zidane, Beckham; Ronaldo, Raul Note: Suker and Del Piero both received 15 votes compared with 12 for Seedorf and Beckham 1997-8 Actual team: Peruzzi; Neville, Hierro, Blanc, Roberto Carlos; Figo, Redondo, Zidane, Del Piero; Ronaldo, Vieri Revised team: Peruzzi; Neville, Hierro, Blanc, Roberto Carlos; Figo, Nedved, Zidane, Luis Enrique; Ronaldo, Del Piero 1998-9 Actual team: Roa; Thuram, Stam, Blanc, Lizarazu; Beckham, Effenberg, Mihajlovic, Rivaldo; Raul, Batistuta Revised team: Kahn; Thuram, Mihajlovic, Stam/Blanc, Lizarazu; Beckham, Effenberg, Veron, Rivaldo; Raul, Batistuta Note: Both Stam and Blanc received 18 votes
I wonder if it's also possible to see the votes breakdown for the 94/95 season mate? I know it was just a vote for a seasonal XI, rather than done on a monthly basis anyway of course.
Yeah, I received that one from Kicker, as well. It didn't fit into my project, so I left it out. But here it is.
Thanks mate - really good and interesting to be able to see that too. Great work with finding this all out and making the spreadsheet. It's even possible for us to get a gauge at least on how many publications were involved each year just by tallying up the votes I suppose. Seems like a few non-defenders were included in defensive slots for 94/95. The second XI appears to be like this (prioritising Kicker selections as tie-breaker, mainly at the back, as they helped you out; I do wonder whether one Ronald De Boer selection was meant to be Frank but could also be only 3 defenders were selected and the template was for 4): Bucci; Panucci, Hierro, Roche, F.De Boer; R.De Boer, Sousa, D.Baggio; Savicevic, Vialli, R.Baggio Perhaps all of this is also useful or interesting for the likes of @Perú FC @Tom Stevens @msioux75
Also interesting comment (since it was pre-Bosman) that Ajax "climbed the pinnacle" and could "long stay there". Other than left back Maldini more or less a split vote otherwise, although like Ballon d'Or it gives more credit to the winners than FIFA famously did at the end of the year.
The Don Balón team is remarkable. 4 out and out strikers, 3 forwards and a further very attacking winger (Basler).
Yes, I think I worked out it must be Frank De Boer in Don Balon's team (must be a typo as Ronald's two entries are from other sources as midfielder). At most they picked 3 defenders depending where Karembeu played that season I think though. And for the second XI, as well as possibly Basler and Desailly being alternative options as midfielders, I make it 4 full-backs and 5 goalkeepers who are alternatives with only one vote each (only Baia was a goalkeeper with multiple votes).
The magazines involved each season is easy to find, and I'll probably do that soon. It's quite possible the De Boer bit is an error (one recent vote had Jesus Navas in the Real Madrid goal ), but not necessarily. There was also one vote that had both De Boers in the backline. In general some of the squads in the votes were just insane! Man, I wish I'd written up a few of them. There was stuff like a 3-back line, and then a midfield of like Robben, Raul, Totti and Ronaldinho, and then the strikers. I'm surprised they bothered to include a goalie! Def-mids got screwed, like they always do in votes like these. So when a def-mid gets huge numbers (like Kante recently) it's doubly impressive.
Hello guys! I made site with information about ESM team of months: http://www.erubik.xyz/esm/ I used RSSSF, this thread and Russian resources for data. I tried to check it thoroughly but there could be mistakes. If you see something wrong, please tell me. If not, just enjoy!
I've updated my ESM-file to include last season. Half of the strikers who received one point are missing, because World Soccer sux. Oh well, I guess one point isn't going to make a huge difference.
I took the full season stats from their summer issue. Apparently they ran out of space, and didn't publish the entire list of strikers.
I have verified that adding the votes of the players of the eleven of the month, they do not coincide with the accumulated that publishes World Soccer. Does anyone know of any place where the votes of the 13 media of the ESM are published in detail? I still need to locate December 2018 and January 2019?
Now that the season is over I had a look at the ESM selections: To my suprise Ter Stegen has 4 and Oblak just 1. If someone looks at the ESM XIs in a decade he might assume that Ter Stegen had a clearly superior season - I think that would be pretty controversial, if not to say blatantly wrong. Even if you prefer Ter Stegen - who had a brilliant season and might be a Top 3 GK in my opinion - 4 to 1 looks like a landslide victory. - From the games I've watched I would have Oblak as the best GK in the league. Just a gut feeling that he won a lot of of games with outstanding saves. If you want to look for a weakness then it's his distribution ability compared to other top keepers, might be more problematic playing for certain teams. - Oblak has the best stats (whoscored, sofascore, xG prevented / 90 mins). Some might assume that the Atletico defense doesn't allow many shots, but he actually had the 4th most saves in the entire league.... ended up with the lowest GA in La Liga of course. - Oblak appears in all La Liga allstar teams I've seen. Doesn't matter if voted by the fans or made by the media. - Oblak is generally mentioned as one of the outstanding players in the league this season and Atletico's best player. - Oblak has a higher average rating in the magazines I've checked (Italian, Marca...) What should we learn from this? ESM selections are useful, but - just like every other method - not perfect. Even in case of a large gap, take it with a grain of salt.
Indeed, Ter Stegen and Oblak have been the best goalkeepers in the league. Both have had memorable performances. Some will like one more or the other; it is a matter of taste. Anyway, I'm not surprised that Ter Stegen received more votes during the season in ESM. I have seen all the games of the season of Barcelona and I can assure you that his impressive interventions have brought many points to his team. Two of your best stops can be seen here:
Does anyone have the full votes for the 2018-19 season? Have they been published yet? Would love to update my ESM-file (as well as my best players list for 2015-20).
On population, system and development: "A lot of youth coaches are trying to use their position to become professional coaches, so they're not accepting the role of a player developer; they just try to win games to advance to the professional level, and that's a huge problem. A lot of the success we have is based on sheer mass of players. We have 82 million people living in Germany. Portugal has, what, ten million? And they are European champions. So if you look at the ratio of great players that they develop, they're doing a much better job. The fact is we don't really have much depth in the youth national teams. The ratio of potential players who we are developing in Germany, and those who turn into great players we are not doing well enough. We're [just] doing well enough not to prevent making up a good national team." https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...s-made-them-the-team-of-the-century-l920b58g6 (The Times, 11 June 2018, before World Cup) -------------------- Here is the 'ESM per capita'. The ESM team of the month inclusions in relation to the population. I decided to take the inclusions rather than the votes, because the size of the voter pool could vary. Inclusions per million 1995 - 2019 (minimum 15 inclusions) Uruguay - 12.6 Portugal - 10.0 Netherlands - 7.9 Spain - 6.9 Wales - 5.8 Belgium - 5.2 Serbia - 4.3 Argentina - 4.2 Italy - 3.7 France - 3.4 England - 3.1 Sweden - 2.6 Czech Republic - 2.5 Germany - 2.4 Brazil - 1.5 Ivory Coast - 1.1 Cameroon - 0.8 Ukraine - 0.4 In some cases there can be an outlier (Cristiano Ronaldo who takes 49% of Portugal's inclusions; Eto'o responsible for 94% of his country inclusions). When excluding the top ranked player, then this happens: Inclusions per million 1995 - 2019 (excluding top ranked player) Uruguay - 7.7 Netherlands - 7.1 Spain - 6.4 Portugal - 5.1 Belgium - 4.2 Italy - 3.3 France - 3.1 England - 2.7 Wales - 2.6 Argentina - 2.5 Germany - 2.2 Serbia - 2.0 Brazil - 1.3 Czech Republic - 1.2 Ivory Coast - 0.7 Sweden - 0.6 Ukraine - 0.2 Cameroon - 0.04 It isn't an enormously big surprise Spain and Netherlands are the best of Europe, not necessarily at least. At world level Uruguay comes into the mix though Suarez (with ESP and NED connection), Godin (made big strides in ESP) and Cavani are responsible for 80% of their country inclusions. I didn't know what to do with Yugoslavia (15 inclusions until 2000). Denmark is at 1.8 inclusions per million, at 1.1 without their outlier Schmeichel (who was almost 32 years old when this thing started). Had ESM existed between 1982 and 1995 I guess they might be off the chart... (only 5.1 million inhabitants in 1986, Netherlands 14.5 in the same year as a comparison). Belgium will move higher if you take just their northern regions.
(Interesting how Ivanovic has a few more monthly selections as gunslinger Ashley Cole...) When taking a look at this again, I saw one major 'oddity'. The description says the ESM team of the season is decided by the number of monthly selections, with the individual votes as tiebreaker (the voting pool could vary by season, even by month sometimes). However, in 2010-11 Victor Valdes had actually fewer monthly inclusions as the retiring VdS. Two vs three. Valdes had however one more individual vote. https://erubik.xyz/esm/season.php?id=2010-11&view=bymonth As far as I can see for 2010-11 this is the only case and position where that 'votes vs months' makes a difference. In the surrounding seasons it is by monthly selections again, as per usual description (at all places). Three team of the seasons (1996, 2009, 2011) had meant a record for a goalkeeper at that point (and is still a joint record), just as the 14 monthly selections. It makes you wonder whether that change was done with a purpose, even if ESM has of course far from the perceived weight as the Ballon d'Or (with all the phoning, lobbying and nepotism that contains - as shown recently again by Sergio Ramos his phonecalls). Are there more of these examples? I cannot see.
You mean this https://www.theguardian.com/football/2011/feb/27/ashley-cole-chelsea-air-rifle What has this to do with with ESM team of the month selections? You simply can't resist
World Soccer is being World Soccer again. As far as I can see, they left out the full results of the last two months of last season (April and May). Because World Soccer is World Soccer, they also refuse to respond to my requests for the results. Anyone know if any other publication published the full votes, or if they're available somewhere?