The Best FIFA awards
How many USWNT players have ever won the Best FIFA Football Award?
The United States women have dominated the international game over the years but a year of transition is reflected by the Best FIFA Football Awards.
Are you ready for the Best FIFA Football Awards 2024? Up for grabs amongst the prizes once again is that of the Best Women’s Player of 2023, which will be contested by Aitana Bonmatí, Barbra Banda and Caroline Graham Hansen along with the USWNT’s new generation of Girma, Smith and Rodman.
Last year marked the third time in four years in which the United States were not represented in the top three in this particular category; this year’s list is longer - there is no ‘top three’ - and the new generation has shown to have some serious talent.
Which USWNT stars have been Best Women’s Player finalists?
Since the Best FIFA Football Awards were created in 2016 (and first handed out in 2017), Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe and Carli Lloyd have all been finalists in the Best Women’s Player category.
Morgan never managed to take home this particular individual award but did come mightily close in 2019 when she fell just four votes short of compatriot Rapinoe. Since then, representatives from England and Spain have won the prize, but from the start of the century, in its various forms, a player from the USWNT has been crowned the world’s best on six occasions.
The Best FIFA Women’s Player was previously known as the FIFA Women’s World Player of the Year from 2001 until 2015, a period in which three Americans came out on top. All in all, those six victories have been achieved by four different players, with Mia Hamm (2001 and 2002) and Lloyd taking the gong home twice.
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Women’s player of the year (all formats):
- 2023: Aitana Bonmatí, Spain
- 2022: Alexia Putellas, Spain
- 2021: Alexia Putellas, Spain
- 2020: Lucy Bronze, England
- 2019: Megan Rapinoe, USA
- 2018: Marta, Brazil
- 2017: Lieke Martens, The Netherlands
- 2016: Carli Lloyd, USA
- 2015: Carli Lloyd, USA
- 2014: Nadine Keßler, Germany
- 2013: Nadine Angerer, Germany
- 2012: Abby Wambach, USA
- 2011: Homare Sawa, Japan
- 2010: Marta, Brazil
- 2009: Marta, Brazil
- 2008: Marta, Brazil
- 2007: Marta, Brazil
- 2006: Marta, Brazil
- 2005: Birgit Prinz, Germany
- 2004: Birgit Prinz, Germany
- 2003: Birgit Prinz, Germany
- 2002: Mia Hamm, USA
- 2001: Mia Hamm, USA
What are the Best FIFA Football Awards?
The Ballon d’Or was the individual awards ceremony, run by France Football, that captured the imagination each year, but FIFA executives have a penchant for glitz and glamour and set up their ‘Best’ version which has been going since 2016. Here’s how the organisation itself describes it.
‘The Best FIFA Football Awards annually honour the most outstanding members of the world’s most popular sport. They not only represent the game’s highest honour for coaches and footballers, but are a celebration in which football fans are recognised - and play a vital and active part ... with their votes helping to crown the best players and coaches in men’s and women’s football. The FIFA Fan Award was also given out for the first time to honour outstanding gestures from supporters.’
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