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Unresolved controversies with FIFA 'The Best' awards
Matthew
Roar Rookie
3rd October, 2018
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Matthew
Roar Rookie
3rd October, 2018
4

When a bull is released inside a China shop the result could be catastrophic. Bulls and China shops – like oil and water – don’t mix.

If you’re wondering the allusion to the beast, perhaps you didn’t realise it’s the cattle season and Mauricio Pochettino best explains it with is cow tale. Nothing best described the Puskas Award on the night of the Best FIFA Football Awards event than a bull running amok.

The Puskas Award is supposed to reward the best goal of the year regardless of championship, gender or nationality.

I don’t think the great Ferenc Puskas would have been pleased with the award of the best goal to Liverpool’s ‘Egyptian King’ Mo Salah for his goal in the Premier League against Everton. At the end of the day the majority had their way.

Mohamed Salah

Mohamed Salah of Liverpool (Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)

Among the contenders for the best goal were the overhead kicks by Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo against Liverpool and Juventus respectively in the Champions League, Denis Cheryshev’s stunner against Croatia in the quarter final of the Russia 2018 World Cup, Benjamin Pavard’s volley against Argentina, the beautifully controlled pass and neatly executed goal by Leo Messi against Nigeria, Ricardo Quaresma outside foot shot against Iran, Lazaros Christodoupoulos’ thunderbolt free kick for Olympiacos against rivals AEK Athens and the audacious scorpion kick by Riley McGree for Melbourne City against Newcastle Jets in the A-League.

It’s understandable why neither of the goals scored by Bale and Ronaldo stood a chance of winning the award. Both goals were too similar in their execution and to create a distinction between them will lead to considering factors not directly related to the execution of the goal.

Last year, Olivier Giroud’s scorpion kick won him the Puskas Award. With this year’s award, it appears fans were tired of scorpion kicks hence they didn’t vote McGree’s goal as the best goal.

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Riley McGree of the Jets scores a second-half goal from a 'scorpion' kick

AAP Image/Darren Pateman

The Puskas Award is the only award left entirely to the fans to decide the final winner after a group of experts would have drawn up a shortlist of nominees. It’s no wonder Mo Salah’s goal, despite being a thing of beauty in its own right, pipped goals that were more audacious and difficult to execute to the award.

James Milner’s tweet was suggestive of the fact that the goal wasn’t close to his best with his tongue in cheek statement congratulating Salah on his seventh best goal. Although it was a playful assessment by Salah’s team mate at Liverpool, it gives an idea how far off the goal was from the best the Egyptian scored last season.

The goal has been rumoured to be a sympathy award to the Egyptian. He missing out on the Best Men’s Player award and omission from the FIFA FIFPro World 11 despite an outstanding season.

Salah’s award throws light on the danger of leaving voting open to fans without setting a yardstick upon which choices should be made. Fans of football – in fact every other sport – are known to be biased and usually unable to see beyond their affiliation coloured lenses.

This makes a mockery of the voting and reduces it to a mere popularity contest. The same thing could be said of the Best Awards in general because of the voting process as some national team coaches and captains clearly exhibit bias when they vote.

Over the years there seem to be so many inconsistencies in the award of not just the best goal but also Men’s Player and the FIFPro 11. One would expect the top three nominees of the Men’s Player to be part of the 11. That’s not the case.

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If only on account of the performance of a nominee at the World Cup, an event which spans a month – that is seven games in the event that the country he represents gets past the semi-final – the player wins the Player of the Year award without a consideration of the preceding months it will seem unfair.

Thibaut Courtois had an indifferent season while at Chelsea and won the best goalkeeper on account of his outstanding performance at the World Cup. Manchester United’s David De Gea had a good season for club, as he usually does, but a forgettable World Cup experience. De Gea didn’t obviously didn’t the best goalkeeper award but made the FIFPro 11.

The list of the nominees for the Best Goalkeeper Award were simply a continuation of the World Cup award. One would expect that the award for best goalkeeper shouldn’t be restricted to the World Cup alone. This raises a lot of issues to the fact that what then is the criteria upon which a goalkeeper makes the FIFPro 11.

All of these inconsistencies have led to several arguments which have raised calls for a review of the voting process. In addition to this, there has been calls from some quarters for the awards to be scrapped outright as football is a team sport and individual footballers are a part of a squad and not the other way round.

Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger who are known not to see eye to eye on a lot of issues are surprisingly unanimous on scrapping individual awards.

If a more acceptable method of voting isn’t adopted by the world football governing body to quell the controversies surrounding its awards, a lot more than china may be destroyed and further damage the reputation of the body.

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