THE BEST AWARDS
“A joke”: Toni Kroos and brother Felix mock The Best FIFA Awards and Real Madrid snub
No Real Madrid players won any The Best FIFA Football Awards despite the club’s LaLiga and Champions League victories.
Toni Kroos and his brother Felix usually discuss all kinds of current affairs on their Einfach mal luppen podcast (rough translation: Take a closer look) and the topic up for debate on this week’s episode was The Best FIFA Football Awards. While the Real Madrid midfielder was the more cautious of the two when it came to voicing his opinion, the now-retired Felix, formerly of Werder Breme, went in hard on world soccer’s governing body. For the younger Kroos, the awards were “a joke”, which the elder brother agreed with following the lack of recognition for Real Madrid’s biggest stars.
That said, Felix began by stressing that soccer is a team sport and that individual performances shouldn’t stand out above collective ones. “In the end, there are always many players who deserve it,” Felix explained, adding that only last season “there was no doubt about the winner. It was clear that Benzema would win it after everything he had done”.
But his tone quickly changed when discussing Monday’s Best FIFA Awards, which he called a “joke, it’s a joke”. Toni swiftly responded: “that’s why you couldn’t see Real Madrid anywhere at the gala. I also boycotted it. I didn’t get any awards”. In addition to fans being unhappy at their favourites missing out on top individual prizes, soccer players themselves being rubbed up the wrong way by such awards seems to be something of a rising trend.
“Nobody knew Dibu Martínez before the World Cup”
Felix was also unhappy with the winner of The Best FIFA Goalkeeper Award being Argentina shotstopper Dibu Martínez: “what was a joke for me was that the Argentina goalkeeper was also chosen as the best goalkeeper. Nobody knew him before the World Cup and they only gave him the award because of the World Cup. I didn’t even think he was that good. He had one or two good saves, especially in the final, but he didn’t make the best impression as a goalkeeper.”
Lionel Messi “isn’t the best of all time”
The brothers, however, failed to agree that Lionel Messi deserved his award for Best Male Player after winning the World Cup with La Albiceleste.“In World Cup years, the tournament is always a big factor when it comes to individual awards. There he was the most outstanding player. That’s why it wasn’t a surprise, right?” Toni explained. For Felix, thoughj, that shouldn’t have been enough: “He may have been the best player at the World Cup, but this is about a whole year. So I didn’t think he was ‘outstanding’ enough to win it.”
The younger Kroos doesn’t believe Messi is not the best of all time either, as many had said after he had added the World Cup to his sizeable personal trophy collection. “These kinds of debates are rubbish”, said the former Union Berlin player. “There may be the best of a certain era, but not the best of all time.” An opinion that Toni opted not to react to.