The Best FIFA Football Awards 2017: As it happened
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The Best FIFA Football Awards 2017 will be awarded by the world governing body at the London Palladium on Monday evening across a number of categories covering coaches and players in the men’s and women’s games, the Puskás Award for the best goal of the year, the best keeper, the best set of club fans and the FIFA Fair Play Award. The FIFA World XI 2017 will also be selected.
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Voting for the awards is tallied from the totals submitted by four groups of people: national team coaches of FIFA member nations, the captains of those teams, football journalists and fans. Each group has an equal weighting of 25 percent on the overall vote.
The Best FIFA Men’s Player
Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi are on the three-man shortlist for the best player of the year for a second consecutive time, having held a monopoly on the Ballon d’Or and the recently created FIFA Best awards for the past nine years. They will be accompanied by Neymar, who moved from Barcelona to PSG during the summer for a world record fee.
Ronaldo is the favourite to retain the award he won last year on the back of four major titles in 2017: the Champions League, LaLiga, the Spanish Super Cup and the European Super Cup. In the Champions League, the Portuguese was instrumental in the knock-out stages as Real claimed a 12th European crown, scoring 10 goals across the quarterfinals, semifinals and final.
Messi, who was second behind Ronaldo last season, led Barcelona to a third consecutive Copa del Rey title, scoring in the final, and was key to Argentina’s World Cup qualification with a hat-trick in the decisive match against Peru.
Neymar’s performance against PSG in the Champions League was overshadowed by that photo of Messi celebrating with fans but it was enough to convince the Parisian club to smash the world transfer record to take the Brazilian star to Paris, where he has been in good form for his new side. He was also part of the side that won the 2017 Copa del Rey and led Brazil to World Cup qualification as winners of the Conmebol qualification group.
The Best FIFA Men’s coach
Zinedine Zidane, Massimiliano Allegri and Antonio Conte make up the shortlist for coach of the year, with the Real Madrid boss the overwhelming favourite to pick up the gong after leading his side to Champions League and Liga glory, then adding the two Super Cups at the start of the 2017-18 season. Allegri coached Juventus to the Champions League final and secured a domestic double of Scudetto and Coppa Italia while Conte, his predecessor at the Old Lady, took Chelsea to the Premier League title.
The rest of The Best candidates
The Best FIFA Women’s Player: Denya Castellanos (Venezuela), Carli Lloyd (USA), Lieke Martens (Netherlands).
The Best FIFA Women’s coach: Nils Nielsen (Denmark), Gérard Prêcheur (Lyon), Sarina Wiegman (Netherlands).
The Best FIFA Goalkeeper: Gianluigi Buffon (Juventus), Keylor Navas (Real Madrid), Manuel Neuer (Bayern Munich).
The FIFA Puskás Award: Deyna Castellanos (Venezuela), Oliver Giroud (Arsenal), Oskarine Masuluke (Baroka).
The FIFA Fan Award: Borussia Dortmund, Celtic, Copenhagen.
