Fabio Cannavaro was a worthy winner of last year's FIFA world player of the award. He doesn't deserve to be nominated this year, though. (Christopher Lee/Getty Images)
Soccer: John F. Molinaro
FIFA world player award is a farce
Last Updated Friday, October 12, 2007
by John F. Molinaro, CBC Sports
Leave it to the good folks at FIFA to once again get it spectacularly wrong.
Soccer's world governing body released its shortlist of nominees for this year's FIFA world player of the year award on Wednesday. Every national team coach and captain will vote on the award, to be handed out in December, by selecting a winner from FIFA's list of 30 of the best players from around the world.
Or so FIFA would have us believe.
As per usual, the shortlist is not an accurate reflection of the game's top players. Instead, it is a mishmash of celebrity players, stars past their prime and glaring omissions, a true testament to how much FIFA is out of touch.
Players should be nominated based on merit, not on their name, but FIFA officials were once again star struck when compiling the list of this year's nominees.
How else does one explain the inclusion of last year's winner Fabio Cannavaro? Cannavaro was a worthy winner in 2006, but it defies logic that the Italian is up for the award this time around after having what many would charitably call a mediocre season in Spain with Real Madrid.
The same can be said of fellow Italians Andrea Pirlo and Alessandro Nesta (both of AC Milan), Frenchmen Thierry Henry (Arsenal), Patrick Vieira (Inter Milan) and Lilian Thuram (FC Barcelona), English star Wayne Rooney (Manchester United) and FC Barcelona striker Samuel Eto'o of Cameroon.
Pirlo, Nesta, Thuram and Rooney are accomplished players, but all of them are coming off less-than-spectacular seasons with their respective clubs. Henry, Vieira, and Eto'o missed several months of action due to injuries and were hardly the influential figures they have been in the past.
And yet there they are, named to FIFA's list of candidates, not because of anything they did this past season, but because of their reputations.
One wonders how AS Roma star Francesco Totti, the Golden Boot winner as the top scorer in all of Europe last season, did not make the cut? Or how stylish Swede Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who is universally regarded as one of the top forwards in the game, was overlooked?
And what about Cesc Fabregas of Arsenal and fellow Spaniard and FC Barcelona star Andres Iniesta who meant much more to their respective teams than Henry and Thuram did?
How about goalkeeper Craig Gordon, who has almost single-handedly kept Scotland alive in the Euro 2008 qualifiers? He's not on the list, but Gianluigi Buffon, a terrific goalkeeper to be sure, was nominated, even though he played in Serie B last season?
The nomination process is only half the problem, though. The voting system for the award, where national team coaches and captains cast ballots to decide the winner, is just as flawed.
On the surface this seems reasonable enough, but then you realize that the vote of the Solomon Islands national team coach and that of Luiz Scolari, Portugal's coach, are weighted equally.
Coaches of small nations don't play as many games as managers of traditional soccer powers (such as France, Italy and Brazil) in a given year, so it's hard to understand why their votes should be treated equally.
All too often, coaches of smaller nations simply cast their vote based on a player's popularity or celebrity.
A perfect example of this came in 2003 when the Czech Republic's Pavel Nedved, a gritty midfielder who's not incredibly flashy, won the Ballon d'Or as the European player of the year but, inexplicably, he wasn't even a finalist for the FIFA world player award (Zinedine Zidane beat out Henry and Ronaldo, three players who delight fans with their flashy play).
It was David Beckham's celebrity that resulted in him finishing runner-up for the FIFA award in 1999 and 2001, because, Lord knows, at no time in his career was he ever among the top five players in the world, let alone the second-best.
What about the award's appalling track record of every winner coming from either Spain or Italy? Surely, there must be some quality players who make their living in England, France, Germany, Brazil or Argentina?
Apparently not, as every single winner of the award, dating back to 1991 when it was first handed out, has come from either a Spanish or Italian team.
And what about the bias towards players from European teams? Although players from three continents (Europe, South America and Africa), have won the award, they were all playing for European clubs at the time of their victory.
Message to FIFA: get out of the award business and stick to organizing the World Cup.
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