Opinion: Disjointed FIFA Football Awards

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So the FIFA Football Awards or THE BEST happened last night at London and Luka Modrić won the Men's Best Player Award beating Cristiano Ronaldo and Mohamed Salah. Modrić has done what Wesley Sneijder, Franck Ribery and Manuel Neuer could not do. Break the Ronaldo-Messi duopoly. 

Despite knowing he was going to win as Cristiano Ronaldo didn't attend the ceremony, Modrić was the deserved winner for what he has done over the past 12 months for both Real Madrid and Croatia. It's a sense of refreshment that a central midfielder who doesn't have high goals and assists numbers can be recognized as the best player in the world. Since Fabio Cannavaro, the FIFA Award mostly goes to attackers, something that former World Cup winning captain Philipp Lahm stated.

There was some controversy with some of the winners from last night. Firstly, the Puskás award. Mohamed Salah's goal against Everton didn't deserve it. That wasn't even Salah's best goal from last season and I feel it was used just to compensate Salah and his legion of fans. I would have picked Pavard's goal against Argentina for how the goal was and the body coordination of the player. Ronaldo's goal against Juventus was a deserved winner as well as Gareth Bale's goal as it came in the Champions League Final with the game tied 1-1.

Also, the FIFPro XI. How come Mohamed Salah made to the Final Three but was not in the TOTY. Taking away team honours from last season, Salah still had a far superior season to Kylian Mbappé with Salah scoring 51 goals for club and country and breaking the Premier League record for goals scored in a season by a player while Mbappé scored just 26 goals for club and country. The inclusion of David de Gea was strange considering that Thibaut Courtois won the Best Goalkeeper Award that night and how the World Cup would have been a factor with Courtois winning the Golden Glove while de Gea had a disappointing tournament. 

Dani Alves inclusion doesn't make sense at all whatsoever. So there was no Dani Carvajal, no Joshua Kimmich, no Kyle Walker. Players who played double the games as Alves last season plus the fact that Alves was injured for a good chunk of last season. Eden Hazard being part of the team is debatable. Hazard last season for Chelsea, was okay. Not great but okay. The World Cup gave him a big boost as he was one of the best players in the tournament. However, you can make a case for Kevin De Bryune as he was the best player outside of Salah in the EPL last season. 

Overall, the FIFA Football Awards was so disjointed that I honestly don't know what influences FIFA and their decisions. They tried to please everyone while at the same time, raised a lot of eyebrows but it's football and we want to be subjective with this. 

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