FIFA’s Best Player Award: Who deserves it?

By Boluwatife Ezekiel Olaleye

The Best: Who deserves it? What does one have to do to get it? Is it even worth it?

Coach Arsene Wenger and some other coaches have at different times said there should be no need for an award meant to recognize a single player as the best in the world and in the same vein, some players have concurred with the notion they believe it is now full of politics.

Over the years, so many controversies have surrounded the newly revamped ‘the best’ award in the aspect of voting, who the award should be given to, what to do to get it, the award being given to specific people and so on. However, have we forgotten that football is not like Tennis, Boxing and the likes? Football is a team sport [eleven players working together to achieve a goal as a unit which is winning].

So when you give an individual player the prestigious ‘the best’ award because of his performances throughout a calendar year, will it not downplay the performances of his teammates? Should the award then be awarded to teams to recognize their efforts (because no matter how outstanding a player is, he needs his teammates) rather than individuals?

To this end, the question is, ” has ‘the best’ or does ‘the best’ make a positive mark on football? Does it encourage selfishness instead of teamwork? Does it encourage ambition instead of vision? Yes, it helps people develop into better players but is it at the expense of the team? Do teammates become rivals because they want to win the gong? As much as the intention is right, to recognize the extra efforts put in by a player, if it becomes team-concentrated with everybody called on the podium and given awards, would it not make them function more as a unit because there is a prize that would recognize their collective efforts bothering greatly on technical adeptness and effective structural functionalism?

For the past decade, football lovers have seen the rules change greatly especially when it comes to the world cup year. The best player award used to go to the stand out player after a month of top, competitive, international games, which is why Fabio Canavarro won the award as a defender back in 2006 after he captained Italy to glory in the world cup finals held in Germany but suddenly, everything changed

What do you have to do to win this accolade? It is said that all clubs and National team coaches, team captains and international journalists vote to determine the winner of this award, however what are the ramifications? Also in a world cup year, how should the winner be decided, are the voting rigged also? (Controversial examples can be that of 2010 where Andres Iniesta was a huge favourite, having proved instrumental in Spain first ever World Cup win and at club level, inspired Barcelona to back-to-back La Liga Trophy,  same as 2013 where Frank Ribery was also tipped to win the award but came  up short because the voting was extended by a  month due to one player’s  heroics that led his team to the world cup).

This prompted the French Coach Didier Deschamps to say, ‘changing the rules when the race has began is cheating’.

FIFA and its top executives were involved in a scandal few years back, leading to the arrest of some top officials and the proponed resignation of Sepp Blatter. With this in mind, it won’t be farfetched to say FIFA is the cause of the controversies that have surrounded ‘the best’ award. Their intentions are not always wrong but their methods are sometimes questionable. An example was the merging of the then ‘FIFA world best player’ with the French Ballon D’or which many saw as devaluation of the award and after five years of partnership, they have parted ways leading to the creation of ‘the best’

There will always be divided opinions on the award. The standout player should be rewarded for his extra efforts, commitment, zeal and everything that he put in to get to that level, however football is a team sport and there should be some sort of official recognition for collective team efforts as grand as ‘the best’.

In terms of voting, the voting system needs to be very transparent. Some will ask that should ‘the best’ award be team focused or player concentrated. Well, it is just a matter of perspective as it is a topic that will continue to divide opinions.

ALSO SEE: I am tired of criticisms – Ronaldo

The dominance of Messi and Ronaldo in the footballing world has seen so many criteria towards determining the winner of the award changed. Every year, different factors decide the eventual winner as we have seen in recent years. Like in 2010, when Messi won the world best player award because of his key role that season. He scored a total of 47 goals in all competition, helping Guardiola’s Barca to a consecutive la liga triumph recording only a single defeat and equalling Ronaldo’s club record from the 1996–97 campaign. He notably scored all of his side’s four goals in the Champions League quarter-final against Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal on 6 April while becoming Barcelona’s all-time top scorer in the competition. Although Barcelona were eliminated in the Champions League semi-finals by the eventual champions, Inter Milan, Messi finished the season as top scorer (with 8 goals) for the second consecutive year. He didn’t win the world cup, in fact, he didn’t score a single goal as Argentina were eliminated in the quarter-finals by Germany, yet he won the FIFA Best Player award (Ballon d’or) and that’s when it dawned on many that the world cup was no longer a deciding factor for the award again.

Also in 2016, Messi had better individual performance than Ronaldo in club and international level. He had 43 goals and 23 assists that season, more dribbling and passing ratio than Ronlado and he inspired Barca to La Liga and Copa del rey double. On the international level, he recorded five goals for Argentina in the 2016 Copa America Centenario-he performed better than Ronaldo did for Portugal in the Euros. He had to endure critics at the early stage of the competition and even though his three goals did help inspire Portugal to the final, he didn’t play the final and Portugal were only lucky to come out as  European Champions that night following an extra-time goal from Eder in a match that France could have killed long before 90 minutes judging from the loads of chances they created. Ronaldo eventually won the best player award that year following Champions League and European Championships success and again it dawned on football lovers again that the notion that the award was meant to recognise individual performances was questionable.

This happenings have caused a lot of mystery as to who is the right person  that should be standing on the podium to receive the award after a calendar year. The initial perspective behind the award has been haltered and it won’t be an exaggeration to say for as long the current two power houses dominating the footballing scene continue to play at their top level with the teams at their disposal, we will still remain in the dark as to who truly deserves to be crowned the best footballer on the planet…after all, it hasn’t been really fair for the past decade.