And The Winner Is…
The 2019 FIFA Best Player Award took place a few days ago in Milan, but typical with most award ceremonies, this wasn’t without its controversies — from Lionel Messi winning the award for “The Best FIFA Men’s Player” to Real Madrid having 4 players in the World FIFPro 11 (Best 11 players). The less said about the latter, the better.
As for the individual award, here’s the statement from the official website , “In a glittering and superlative career to date, there are few personal accolades and records that Lionel Messi has not won. One that had eluded him was the title of The Best FIFA Men’s Player — until this year…”
The latter part of this statement suggests FIFA felt compelled to issue this award to Messi because it’s the only individual accolade that has “eluded him in a glittering career.”
For context, since its inception in 2016, Ronaldo (while at Real Madrid) won the first 2 (2016 and 2017), while Luka Modric (also at Madrid) fittingly won the 3rd one in 2018 after winning the Champions League and coming second at the World Cup.
FIFA’s rationale therefore is for balancing the age-long rivalry between Ronaldo and Messi. After all, there are signs to suggest both careers (now in their 30s) are closer to winding down than beginning.
To clarify, Lionel Messi did have a really good year, but I would argue not quite as stellar as some from his previous years, nor was it better in any way to say, Allisson or Virgil Van Dijk based on statistics or achievements from last season.
Personally, I can’t wait for Ronaldo and Messi to retire from football so everyone of us (including FIFA) can go back to having some sense and using it!
The world has a lot more players than these two, but we are all just as guilty of fawning over them so much we ignore every other person’s impressive achievements, especially on a season by season basis.
I can also argue that Lionel Messi didn’t get more individual or team honors than VVD or Allisson, so why him and not them? The obvious answer is that it’s because they (Messi/Ronaldo) are Forwards/Attackers. We love to see Goals scored, created or Dribbles made. We really can’t be bothered about Saves, Goals defended, Tackles made and all that “dirty” work.
This is why at the end of each season, UEFA issues one of its most unbalanced awards called “European Golden Shoe”. To qualify for this award, you must be the top scorer in your league. After that, the numbers of goals scored would be multiplied by a coefficient depending on the “strength of your league”.
Goals scored in the top five leagues according to the UEFA coefficients list are multiplied by a factor of two, goals scored in the leagues ranked six to 21 are multiplied by a factor of 1.5, and goals scored in leagues ranked 22 and below are multiplied by a factor of 1.
The implication of this is that you’re likely to win the award with fewer goals as top scorer in the top five leagues of Spain, England, Germany, Italy or France, than someone that is top scorer in Scotland with even more goals!
Needless to say that Lionel Messi won that award this year as one of his individual honors.
This isn’t my beef, however. I’m more interested in understanding why there are no equivalent of the same “Golden Shoe” award for Goalkeepers, Midfielders and Defenders because the earlier we realized that football is a team game, the better.
As for The Best award, I’ll like to propose that FIFA gets on with issuing to either Messi or Ronaldo for what’s left of their careers until they retire, following which, the selection format should be changed. I do not understand how they don’t have the Overall Best Player contested by the respective winners of each department.
For instance, there’s no need having Messi and Ronaldo compete for The Overall Best Award when one of them clearly was the better forward, who should then compete with the Best Goalkeeper, Midfielder and Defender. That way, there’ll be no arguments based on who rightfully deserves the award and more than anything else, would start to help us see the impact of everyone else on the field.
So what made Messi win? Some would argue it’s because of the records or consistency aggregated over a 20-year playing career. But the question is, was this a career award or a seasonal one?
