I personally have no problem with how the voting went. I think that Sheva has earned this award as a bit of a cumulative action, you can say people aren't supposed to consider prior years but I think they do, its human nature. I don't think people forget the way he led AC Milan to the CL title the year before which put him over the top IMO. He also had a spectacular domestic season in Italy. After Sheva you can make strong cases for all of the players. Deco won everything with Porto and than went on to lead Portugal into the finals of Euro 2004. Henry had an absolutley magical season, the best domestically IMO, but was lacking in influence for many of the European campaign's games. Ronaldinho has reinstated Barcelona as a force in the European scene and made them the club to beat in Spain. This year more than ever had a lot of very strong candidates that deserved recognition on their recent performances. The only real disagreement I have is with Zagorakis coming #5, I think a number of players deserved stronger consideration, one that jumps off my head is Lampard who really established himself as a top drawer player and led the Chelsea revolution while solidifying the England midfield as the 4th player.
Henry missed out because he was not good enough. Overrated and has no spirt of fair play. Thats the second time he has done that. Typical Frenchman.
Sprotsmanship makes a man. Henry is so overrated. ONLY the English think he is anything. A bad sport he is and does not deserve to be spoken with the true greats of the game. And no one in La Lega or serie A want this bad sport.
I think Henry is the best striker in the world. I watched what he did against my team last season and it was incredible. No other striker has the combination of pace and movement like he has. Having said that I think he lost out on the award because of France's poor performance in Euro 2004 and Arsenal's inability to get past Chelsea. But, in my opinion he did enough to win it. He was robbed.
Yeh we all know how sporting players in La Liga and Seria A are The funny thing is, if Shevchenko or Ronaldinho were gooners you can be sure the Arsenal haters would be out in force to prove how overrated they were
I can just see it now..... petersoccer: "Look at those stupid EPL defenders getting embarassed by Ronaldinho, any quality European team would handle him. EPL defender's just don't know how to stop skillful players, in Italy Ronaldinho would be marked out of the game. The EPL just makes pathetic overrated players look good."
I take it that only the English voted Henry the second best player in Europe last year along with being named runner-up in the FIFA World Player of the year. I didn't know we had so much influence.
"Sheva has no heart, when's the last time the Ukraine won anything." "Ronny's so arrogant, the way he's always smilling just makes me so mad."