FIFA awarded its individual trophies for the year 2022 on Monday evening and the least we can say is that the names of the winners surprised more than one. Especially in Spain. If the name of the winners was an open secret, the people of Madrid did not even bother to travel to Paris, the award ceremony is still talking in the Iberian press this Tuesday morning.
The Best FIFA Football Awards: the World Cup decided everything
Marca thus pointed “FIFA’s inconsistencies between the best eleven of FIFPro (the union of professional players, editor’s note) and the list of the best players of the year. And the Spanish newspaper establishes an observation: “It’s hard to understand, other than everyone’s tastes are different, but there is something that clearly escapes logic.
“The results of the vote for The Best award have nothing to do with those of the best eleven of the year achieved by footballers around the world”, continues Marca who compared the two rankings to establish a list of inconsistencies as long as your arm.
‘What voters agree on is that Messi was the best of 2022’concedes despite everything the sports daily, “but if you compare the list of the fourteen best footballers for The Best award, you see that seven of them are not in the FIFPro best XI.” Thus, Mané, Alvarez, Vinicius, Salah, Neymar, Lewandowski and Bellingham do not appear in the eleven but they are among the fourteen best players in the world in the list of The Best prize. “In addition, the first five of this list do not appear in the list of 26 chosen to form the eleven designated as the best of the year”points out Marca again.
Courtly ignored
But for the daily AS, it is especially the case of Thibaut Courtois who is challenging: the goalkeeper is part of the best eleven of the year of the FIFPro but was beaten by Emiliano Martinez for the price of the goalkeeper of the year… “Madrid found Courtois’ ‘forgetting’ as the best goalkeeper just as bloody (as Benzema’s ‘forgetting’), if not more paradoxical as far as that’s possible,” explained the daily.
”Courtois lifted Real’s 14th Champions League by being the best goalkeeper in the competition, with a record of saves in the final and actions that went down in history such as his save on Grealish or this penalty saved in Paris… against Messi”remembered AS who definitely does not understand FIFA’s choice, believing that the World Cup weighed more heavily in the votes than the “anthology” C1 won by the Merengues.
“Real Madrid’s year 2022 was one of the best in the history of the white club, but that was not reflected in this gala…”, still regretted the Spanish newspaper.
The Best FIFA Football Awards: Lionel Messi voted best player of 2022, Emiliano Martinez preferred to Thibaut Courtois