Fabio Cannavaro named 2006 FIFA World Player of the Year

By: Bob | December 18th, 2006

Italy and Real Madrid defender Fabio Cannavaro picked up another award Monday when he was named 2006 FIFA World Player of the Year. For his efforts, Cannavaro added to his hardware collection, received excellent mobile phone coverage at FIFA’s golden palace in Zurich and got to chat up Brazil’s Marta, who was named the Women’s World Player of the Year.

Cannavaro beat out Ronaldinho and Zinedine Zidane for the top prize, capping off a year in which he won the World Cup with Italy, a short-lived Serie A title with Juventus and the Ballon d’Or as Europe’s top footballer.

Since the day the not-so-shortlist was announced, many have argued that Cannavaro isn’t worthy of the award and there might be some merit to that. But in a year when there wasn’t one dominant individual, his selection is the right one in my extremely humble opinion.

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Category: World Football

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Geoffrey

i dont see how this guy beat ronaldinho. he's good, real good, but i think that ronaldinho is still the best, he's amazing. but o well.
Louise

Check out Eurosport.com's video section for a translation of Canna's and Marta's speeches.
Comandante Agi

anyone know where to find video footage of the award presentation with english subtitles? I'd like to know what the players were saying.
brasileiro

cannavaro deserves this plum. kudos to him!
john

sam it's good to hear from other fans like yourself who respect the players and are not blinded by nationalism.
Sam

Hey man, I'm french, it's hard to have hard feelings against such a great player. Sure, Juventus is a whole nother story, but nothing can take away the skill this guy has.
Muddia Beduddia

Canna was so magnificent at the World Cup (totally screwed out of the Golden Ball) that he clearly deserved this. Not shocked to see some more Italy haters on the boards bashing the call. I can only assume Nick to be a a whiny, and clearly French.
john

Well Deserved Canna. What a great honour to recieve this award as voted on by your peers.

Congratulations Fabio!!!
Nick

What a joke! He captained a bunch of cheats at Juve. Can we truly believe the players there were oblivious to all of the ref's dodgy calls toward that team? Bah!
Sam

Nice job, you've got to be freakishly good to win that award as a defender.
Louise

Well deserved. Congrats to Canna!