Review of players listed for the FIFA 2007 Player of the Year award

 

It's time of year when this year's FIFA World Player is decided by coaches and captains of the national team worldwide.

But before we get into the discussion of the list of players drawn for 2007, an introduction to the mechanism of the system would first be discussed. The award was started in 1991 for the male player and in 2001 for the female player categories. Basically, coaches and national team captains would vote for players drawn by FIFA's technical committees. The system used is called the Borda count, where each coach and ยูฟ่าหลังโควิด have three votes (one of five points, one of three points and one of one point) to cast the players he chose. And the winner is determined by the total number of points received. The winner last year is the Italian defender Fabio Cannavaro from Real Madrid.

Now to the list of players listed for the award this year. On the list are five players of Italian descent, they are Cannavaro, Gianluigi Buffon, Gennaro Gattuso, Alessandro Nesta and Andrea Pirlo. Apart from Cannavaro and Buffon (Juventus), the remaining three players in the UEFA 2006-2007 Champions League winners AC Milan. However, the chances of an Italian repeating the win are slim this year, as the national team did not do best after the 2006 World Cup, and as far as the domestic market is concerned, Serie A is recovering from the arenas of the scandalous hit season.

Next was the discussion of the English candidates for the title. They are Steven Gerrard (Liverpool), Frank Lampard (Chelsea), John Terry (Chelsea) and Wayne Rooney (Manchester United). Looking at the chances of the English participants, none of them have great chances of winning the title, as the English national team has so far had a difficult Euro 2008 qualifying campaign and they had no excellent club operations last season. The other reasons are that although Manchester United and Chelsea went head to head in the Premier League race, they failed to impress at the UEFA Champions League level. As for Gerrard, if Liverpool won the UEFA Champions League final last season against AC Milan, his chances would be different. But they did not, and Liverpool again had one of its oblivious seasons in the league.

As for the French, they have Thierry Henry (Barcelona), Franck Ribery (Bayern Munich), Lillan Thuram (Barcelona) and Patrick Vieira (Inter Milan) on the list. Currently, the chances for the French are as small as the English for similar reasons. Henry has been a world-class player but he could not inspire Arsenal for the Premier League title and for this season he is still adapting to his new club, Barcelona. Ribery also did not have the best season last year and has changed clubs in the summer and travels to the Bungesliga Giants, Munich from the sleeping giants of French football, Marseille. In Vieria's case, Inter Milan retained their Serie A title last season, but as mentioned above, the title was seen to be deducted from Inter midfield for several Serie A clubs and relegation from Juventus. Therefore, he would not have a great chance in this year's competition for the title of best player. For Thuram, it's even gloomier as he did not take part in many of his club's games last season and Barcelona failed to defend their La Liga title.

Brazil has three players listed in Kaka (AC Milan), Juninho (Lyon) and Ronaldinho (Barcelona). Although the Brazilians have a forgotten World Cup in 2006, one in three can still be considered a very possible candidate for the title. He's Kaka. The reason is that he has also won the FIFPro 2007 Player of the Year award, and it was he who inspired AC Milan to win the UEFA Champions League in the middle of a disappointing Serie A 2006-2007 campaign. As for Ronaldinho, a former two-time winner (2004 and 2005), his chances this year are pretty slim as he was not in top form last season with the Catalans Giants when they lost to Real Madrid in the La Liga title. In the case of Juninho, apart from inspiring Lyon to six consecutive French Ligue 1 titles, he had no major effort to notice last season.