Oddities in the FIFA World Player of the Year Votes

By: Martha | December 20th, 2007

Marta = rules. FIFA have finally released the list of votes for their Player of the Year awards. Just to review, each national team captain and coach vote for three players, and points are awarded for each vote in a given position (five for first, three for second, one for third). Disappointingly, the breakdown is much less interesting than it was last year, when people were just all over the place. After going through this year’s votes, however, I would like to have a talk with the people in the US Virgin Islands.

For reasons known only to themselves, USVI (Can I call you USVI?) captain Terrence Jones and coach Daryl Rodgers, despite not agreeing on anyone else, both named Patrick Vieira the second-best player in the world last year.

WHAT?! ARE THEY OUT OF THEIR MINDS??? As an Inter supporter, I can confidentially tell you that Patrick Vieira spent the great majority of 2007 either in the training room, or off getting treatment somewhere in France. When he was on the pitch, he was mostly kicking people, but also, sometimes, falling down, skills for which he earns a cool €5 million/season. Needless to say, none of these things should get him within shouting distance of anyone’s ballot for best anything. Does he secretly own the USVI, or something?

In his semi-defense, Jones also put Fabio Cannavaro in the first slot and Gigi Buffon in the third, so he’s clearly got a Juve fixation that is being worked out in public. His coach, however, had Kaka first and Messi third, so he may just be crazy.

[If you'd like to get your own rant going, the PDF of the men's votes is here, and the women's is here.]

Some Related Stories:

Category: World Football

« College to Pros for MLS: a Fatally Flawed System? | Home | Athletic Bilbao: All Local, Even if it Means Relegation »

The Offside RSS Feeds

Hana

ahh, thanks for the clearup there Martha, man was i confused. :)
Juliet

The only captains voting for Van Nistelrooy are his teammates Canna and Casillas.
Martha

Hana you're not allowed to vote for people on your own team, so the Brazil coach and captain had to pick other people -- I'm sure they'd have voted for her, had it been an option!
Hana

i agree inara. but whoa..what the hell were both the brazilian women's captain/coach thinking..neither voted for her. way to go. and and big ol' hell yes to dunga. i mean, it was clear that ricky was gonna win, and deservedly so, but nice to see that he has some balls to vote for someone just as deserving.
Ian

Nice to see Buffon and Cech get some love. Keepers have to be pretty fantastic to get many votes in this sort of thing, especially with the year that the scoring midfielders had. Canna and Rooney are pretty funny #1s.
Martha

Dunga, clearly, knows his shit. (There were some weird votes, I forgot about the Rooney one, Gabriel! A weirdly high number of votes for Canna -- people watching WC tapes, apparently.)
Brian

I blame Jack Warner. I also agree with Dunga.