Edmur Ribero, Portuguese player. Received his only cap for Brazil this year. Was the top scorer in the RSP winning campaign with 11 goals in 9 games. Not sure how Leonidas got mixed in there. Some type of transition error from spreadsheet to forum. Edit* check that on Leonidas. I am not sure exactly who this player is but in the 1955 Carioca he scored 16 times for America RJ who placed second in the division, pushing Flamengo to a third tiebreaker game to decide the championship. He was capped for Brazil 6 times and scored once in 1956.
Much tougher to get a definitive list this year, I think the top three is fair and would have Di Stefano top, Puskas up there and completely agree re Schiaffino. I think Rial Nordahl and Kopa would be next in no particuar order. I would however definitley add Kocisis though, he along with Puskas and Czibor were the danger men for Hungary who were still dominant and I would definitely have him over Hidgekuti this year. Kocsis was one of the top forwards in the world at this time and is often way back in Puskas shadow when people look back at that team.
Speculation more than anything but Arne Selmosson and Walter Gomez might be shouts for this year or the next one. Selmosson had his first season in Italy with Udinese and although he wasn't prolific it was enough to lead Lazio to spend £55,000 on him at a time when the world record was £68,000. Gomez moved from River Plate to Milan the following year (having won the 1955 title with River) for £50,000. Nothing conclusive but maybe suggest they could be in the mix.
I would have thought Hans Jeppson would definitely be in contention for this season. His first in Italy, he scored 22 goals in 27 games and led Napoli to pay Atalanta a world record £60,000 for his services at the end of the year. I would have thought a borderline top 23 candidate at worst.
Kocsis was probably #24, I will look again to find him a way on. A lot of my impetus for picking Hidgekuti this year was the Mitropa Cup. MTK defeated Wacker Vienna, Hajduk Split, Honved, and Dukla Prague. The tournament had a strange small window of relevance here with the European Cup still a year away. I would put it not far behind the Latin Cup in quality. Hidgekuti scored 9 goals in 9 games.
Selmosson was not really on my radar. I gave Gomez a far amount of thought, he had some famous moments this season but he only played 15 league games.
Nice you rated well to Oscar "Huaqui" Gómez Sánchez this year, among the best SA wingers at this point. Other peruvians who could be in contention (at least HM) are: - Guillermo Delgado for 1953, the best peruvian player domestically and also a very good Copa America. - Félix Castillo for 1954, nicknamed the black arrow in El Dorado, he was the best domestic player that year, also a good El Pacific Cup. Another good candidate is paraguayan keeper, Adolfo Riquelme for 1953, among the 3 best players in the Copa America that year.
Good call re Mitropa Cup, I had kind of ignored it (which was wrong in hindsight) post war due to it's decline so maybe taking Hidgekuti out might not be the option but rather others. Re Kocsis, he scored 10 international goals for a dominant team, also he was a star from the year before and that rightly or wrongly usually works in a players advantage in Ballon d'or voting, for example I would put him ahead the likes of an 18 year old Strelstov, Vukas, some of the South Americans, Bentley and Revie. I personally would have him as a just in top 10, the only players I am definitely confident about being ahead of him are Di Stefano, Puskas, Schiaffino, Kopa, Nordahl, and Rial, there then comes another 5 or 6 including Kocsis who are pretty close.
1956 Andrade, Víctor Rodríguez (Penarol, Uruguay) Artetxe, José Luis (Atletic Bilbao, Spain) Byrne, Roger (Manchester United, England) Cervato, Sergio (Fiorentina, Italy) Di Stefano, Alfredo (Real Madrid) Edwards, Duncan (Manchester United, England) Garay, Jesus (Atletic Bilbao, Spain) Hormazabal, Enrique (Colo-Colo, Chile) Julinho (Fiorentina) Kopa, Raymund (Stade Reims, France) Matthews, Stanely (Blackpool, England) Míguez, Oscar (Penarol, Uruguay) Netto, Igor (Spartak Moscow, Soviet Union) Pagão (Santos, Brazil) Rial, Hector (Real Madrid) Schiaffino, Juan Alberto (AC Milan) Segato, Armando (Fiorentina, Italy) Sivori, Omar (River Plate, Argentina) Streltsov, Eduard (Torpedo Moscow, Soviet Union) Taylor, Tommy (Manchester United, England) Trautmann, Bert (Manchester City) Vairo, Federico (River Plate, Argentina) Yashin, Lev (Dimano Moscow, Soviet Union) Honorable Mention: Néstor Rossi, Amadeo Carrizo, Héctor Guidi, Oreste Omar Corbatta, Rogelio Domínguez, Ernesto Grillo, Guillermo Escalada, Javier Ambrois, Jaime Ramírez, Leonel Sánchez, Emanuelle Del Vecchio, Pepe, Canhoteiro, Luizinho, Djalma Santos, Waldo, Billy Wright, Johnny Haynes, Nathaniel Lofthouse, Gerhard Hanappi, Thadée Cisowski, Robert Jonquet, Giuseppe Virgili, Gunnar Nordahl, Nils Liedholm, Laszlo Kubala, Ramon Villaverde, Antonio Ramallets, Joan Segarra, Francisco Gento, Miloš Milutinović, Todor Veselinović, Abe Lenstra, Anatoliy Ilyin, Sergey Salnikov, Valentin Ivanov, Ferenc Puskás, Sandor Kocsis, Josef Bozsik, Ivan Kolev Off the bat I want to say this was the most difficult year for me on a number of fronts. First I had way more players I wanted to include than spots on the 23. Rossi, Guidi, Ambrois, Sánchez, Luizinho, Santos, Cisowski, Virgili, Nordahl, Kubala, Gento, Milutinović, and Lenstra really hurt to leave off. The problem was there are so many competitions now and in many league/countries you had different players excelling in different areas. For example Real Madrid won the European Cup but finished 10 points behind Bilbao (who won the double) and 9 points behind Barcelona in the league. European Cup runners up Stade placed 10th in their domestic league. Nacional won their second straight league title in Uruguay, but Uruguay's top performers in their SAC victory were Penarol players. In America an extensive international schedule was played by the big teams. Brazil played 24 games with major squad rotation. The team they sent to the SAC did not appear to be their best (missing Didi, Zizinho) but still had many top players (Gilmar, D. Santos, Belangero, Baltazar, Luizinho). They finished in a thee way tie for second. They then played the Pan American Championships with clear B team but still some top players (Luizinho, Chinesinho) and won, despite Argentina and Chile sending better teams. They then went on a 7 game tour of Europe with mixed results and played close to what was their best team. They then played 8 more friendlies back in South America, again with mixed results and a new group of players rotated in. Overall not a very impressive group of results despite all the games played. D. Santos played in the most games of any player (19), while Zizinho was the top scorer (6) despite only playing 8 games at the end of the schedule. Argentina had nearly as rigorous a schedule with 18 matches played. They brought there best team to the SAC (basically the same squad that won last years tournament) and tied for second place with Brazil and Chile. They brought in some new blood for the Pan American Championships (Corbatta, Maschio, Guidi, Domínguez) where they finished a dissapointing second to Brazil despite playing a much better team. They then played an 8 game series of friendlies in South America and had some very strong results (multiple away victories over Uruguay and Brazil), fielding a team that was a mix of the 56 SAC squad (Vario, Dellacha, Sivori), the PAC squad (Corbatta, Maschio, Guidi, Domínguez), and some new additions (Rossi, Angelillo, Cruz) that would become the famous side that would dominate the 57 SAC. The 1956 SAC started out the year with Uruguay winning the title on home soil behind excellent performances from Andrade and Miguez. Hormazabal had another great tournament for Chile. Domestically River won another title in a close call with upstarts Lanus, who played excellent football. In Brazil Santos won another title behind Pagao, Del Vecchio, Pepe, Formiga, and Zito. In Rio, Vasco won there first title with a new group of players led by Vava and Bellini. The was no RSP tournament this season. In Europe, England had found its groove again behind a new generation of players (Haynes, Edwards, Taylor) combined with some of the old guard (Bryne, Wright, Matthews) to make a strong squad. They went undefeated in 8 games in 1956. Manchester United won the league by a startling 11 points led by the aforementioned Bryne, Edwards, and Taylor. In Italy Fiorentina won the title in record breaking style by a a massive 12 points, by adding Brazilian star Julinho to the best defense/midfield in Italy full of top internationals. AC Milan was second in the league and had a strong European campaign, winning the Latin Cup by defeating Doubling winning Bilbao in the final, and advancing to the European Cup final before narrowly losing to eventual champions Real. In Spain Bilbao won the double, edging Barcelona by a single point in the league. Real was out of the title race in Spain but won the inaugural European Cup behind great performances from Di Stefano and Rial. The Soviets were now a known power in European Football after winning the 1956 Olympics behind Netto, Yashin, and Streltsov. The top three was very difficult this season, Di Stefano the exception. Kopa was great in the European Cup but Stade was poor domestically. Netto won the domestic title in Russia and was the dominant outfield player and captain for the Soviets, although I do not have a lot of specific information on the 1956 Olympic performance. A player from the dominant Man U or Fiorentina sides also seems like a possibility but both teams seem to be more complete squads than star driven. I could not find a South American candidate that really stood out this year (But that will definitely change next year).
I don't know if you're already familiar with this, but seeing how Soviet players start to become relevant this might be quite useful for you: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Список_33_лучших_футболистов_сезона_в_СССР It seems like they were voting on 3 allstar teams dating back to 1928 already. Quite shocked when I found this page I never assumed player rankings had such a long lasting tradition in the Soviet Union and I'm not really aware of any other country doing it to such an extend. There's a Polish translation which might be easier to decipher. https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_najlepszych_piłkarzy_roku_w_ZSRR
Re the Hungarian's not making the 23, the revolution only effected the end of the year, for example the last international game was played in mid October and the Golden Team's final four games were pretty impressive with wins against Yugoslavia in Belgrade, USSR in Moscow, France in Paris and Austria in Vienna. This did cause miss the Aolympics which was later in the year in Australia. I think there is a fairly good case for Puskas, Kocsis and Bozsik.
So obviously, this was the first year of the Ballon d'Or. I have just put in the quote above where the various people finished. It is quite a significant difference between the two. Rank Name 1 Stanley Matthews 2 Alfredo Di Stéfano 3 Raymond Kopa 4 Ferenc Puskás 5 Lev Yashin 6 József Bozsik 7 Ernst Ocwirk 8 Sándor Kocsis 9 Thadée Cisowski Ivan Kolev Billy Wright 12 Júlio Botelho 13 Stefan Bozhkov Duncan Edwards Gerhard Hanappi Robert Jonquet Miguel Montuori Pepillo Juan Alberto Schiaffino Eduard Streltsov 21 Campanal II Břetislav Dolejší Roger Piantoni Kees Rijvers
Of course it's going to be different since @Tom Stevens is including players competing in South American leagues.
There are 6 of those in Tom's 23. Of the 17 European-based players Tom picked, 8 were included in the top 24 by France Football. Edit: Just to clarify, it's not a criticism of Tom's lists, which I think are excellent, just an observation.
They did still play a relatively strong international schedule, but there was no domestic season and they did not cover themselves in glory in the European Cup. This is a really crowded year and I found them had to fit when their only real claim this season was some good performances in international friendlies. I know that they were still included in FFs official list but I will not tie myself to it to much. There are plenty of voting decisions in the past that I feel were made on poor levels of information/exposure to players.
Actually there was Hungarian League, it was abandoned about after about 20 of the 26 games so the players still had a pretty much full club season up until late October and Honved's European Cup games agaisnt Bilbao were played in November and December. http://www.rsssf.com/tablesh/honghist1950.html#56
Comparing European names where I differed with FF. Names FF included not in my 23 Ferenc Puskas (HM) Jozsef Bozsik (HM) Sandor Kocsis (HM) Ivan Kolev (HM) Thadée Cisowski (HM) Billy Wright (HM) Gerhard Hanappi (HM) Robert Jonquet (HM) Ernst Ocwirk Stefan Boskov Miguel Montuori José García Castro Marcelino Vaquero Bretislav Dolejsi Roger Piantoni Kees Rijvers Names in my 23 not in FF José Luis Artetxe Sergio Cervato Jesus Garay Igor Netto Hector Rial Armando Segato Tommy Taylor Bert Trautmann To be fair a lot of the names in the FF 23 that were not in mine were their because of a single voter giving someone a 4th or 5th place vote, which really does not mean a whole lot. Some of the differences may be because of the period of assessment FF is the 1956 calendar year while I am the 55-56 season. When comparing the lists I like mine a lot better. I feel the two Bilbao players are much better candidates than the two Sevilla players. Netto, Rial, Taylor, Trautmann, Cervato, and Segato all seem like excellent candidates and I am not sure how they got left out. Of the players I missed Cisowski is the one I really want to find a way to get in to the 23. Montuori should have made my HM as well. Some players seem to be here on reputation (Ocwirk, Piantoni, Rijvers). Jonquet, Hanappi, Wright, Kolev, and the Hungarians are all players I considered and would probably make an all European 23 similar to FFs. I really do not understand why a few players received votes (Dolejsi, García Castro, Boskov, Vaquero), and clarification on these would be appreciated.