THE BEST FIFA FOOTBALL AWARDS 2018
Strange contradictions in Salah and De Gea votes for The Best
The Man United keeper was in the FIFPro XI despite not being among the finalists for The Best. It was the other way around for Liverpool's Egyptian star.
Voting for the various different award categories in FIFA's The Best gala resulted in some contradictory outcomes, such as the cases of Mohamed Salah and David de Gea.
Great season for Salah
Liverpool's Egyptian star Salah was one of the three finalists for FIFA's player of the year award, The Best yet didn't feature in the FIFPro World XI. Meanwhile De Gea's case highlighted the paradoxes which the goalkeepers suffered in general. Out of the three nominees for The Best goalkeeper of 2018 award and the five candidates for the goalkeeper's position in the FIFPro World XI, only one name coincides - Thibaut Courtois. Real Madrid's Belgian keeper picked up The Best award, but didn't appear in the World XI. However, De Gea did - despite not being a finalist for the main award.
De Gea, consistency at United
Those contradictions can partly be explained by how voting was organized. It was the national team coaches and captains of all of the FIFA-affiliated countries who cast their votes for The Best player awards, as well as one representative from the media from each nation; the result of those votes comprised 25% of the overall popular vote taken from FIFA's website. That explains how Mohamed Salah's presence among the finalists for the best player.
The award for the best goalkeeper was selected by a panel of experts formed by ex-players: Alessandro Altobelli (Italy), Vitor Baía (Portugal), Gordon Banks (England), Jorge Campos (Mexico), Rinat Dasaev (Russia), Diego Forlán (Uruguay), René Higuita (Colombia), Peter Schmeichel (Denmark) and Mark Schwarzer (Australia). That panel elected the finalists - Courtois, Hugo Lloris and Kasper Schmeichel. Curiously, the Leicester City keeper is the son of one of the members of the panel.
Meanwhile, the FIFPro World XI was chosen based on the results of votes of over 25,000 professional footballers worldwide. The outcome of those results meant Salah was omitted from the all-star XI while the five candidates for the goalkeeper's position were filled by Buffon, Courtois, De Gea, Keylor Navas and Ter Stegen.
