Picking football’s best player each season proves almost impossible. The process involves journalists who barely understand tactics voting alongside coaches who haven’t watched half the league’s matches.
Players vote for their teammates, agents lobby behind scenes, and social media campaigns somehow influence supposedly objective assessments. This whole system resembles other subjective evaluation platforms like Arabtopcasino.com, where established criteria exist but personal preferences ultimately drive decisions.
Numbers Miss the Complete Picture
Everyone obsesses over goals and assists because they’re easy to count. But watch Fabinho play for ninety minutes and try explaining his impact using spreadsheets. The guy makes interceptions that prevent counter-attacks before they develop, yet those don’t show up anywhere meaningful in post-match statistics.
This statistical bias completely ignores positional responsibilities. Strikers get praised for missing twenty shots if they score twice. Central defenders often face harsh judgment — a single mistake leading to a goal can overshadow fifty successful interventions.
The whole evaluation system skews fundamentally toward attacking output, which explains why defenders rarely win major individual awards.
Voting Panels Create Chaotic Results
Premier League managers vote for player of the season while dealing with relegation battles, European qualification races, and transfer speculation. They’re hardly analyzing every candidate’s seasonal contribution carefully. Most probably decide during the five-minute car ride to submit their ballots.
Players voting for these awards creates weird dynamics. Human nature doesn’t magically disappear because someone plays professional football. Personal relationships, on-field conflicts, and club rivalries all influence these supposedly merit-based decisions.
Journalists who cover specific beats vote on league-wide awards. A reporter who follows Chelsea closely might watch Manchester United twice all season, yet their vote counts equally with someone who attends every match. This uneven knowledge distribution makes fair assessment nearly impossible, though nobody seems bothered enough to fix the obvious problems.
Media Machines Shape Award Perceptions
Football journalism loves creating narratives around individual brilliance, especially when those narratives sell newspapers or generate website clicks. Raheem Sterling’s productivity gets dissected endlessly while Jordan Henderson’s leadership qualities receive casual mentions. Why? Because measuring Sterling’s goals and assists takes five minutes, while explaining Henderson’s positional intelligence requires actual football knowledge.
Social media amplifies this by highlighting spectacular moments while ignoring broader context. A midfielder who completes two hundred passes gets ignored, but score one spectacular goal and suddenly millions think you’re having an amazing season. This visibility gap influences award voting because human psychology responds to memorable moments more than consistent excellence.
International tournaments throw everything into chaos. The Ballon d’Or has historically rewarded World Cup and European Championship performances that happen during specific summer windows.
So a player could have an ordinary club season, score some crucial international goals, and suddenly become a leading award candidate. Meanwhile, someone who was brilliant for ten months gets forgotten because their country didn’t qualify for major tournaments.
Defensive Players Face Unfair Treatment
Goalkeepers encounter the most ridiculous evaluation criteria imaginable. Alisson makes world-class saves look routine, which somehow counts against him because spectacular doesn’t always mean better. Meanwhile, a keeper who makes three amazing saves after letting in two soft goals gets praised for his shot-stopping ability. The logic makes no sense.
Center-backs have it almost as bad. Virgil van Dijk transformed Liverpool’s entire defensive structure, but you can’t put that impact into a neat statistical package. He didn’t score fifteen goals or register ten assists, so explaining his value requires actual football analysis rather than counting things. Most voters prefer counting things.
Full-backs get slightly better treatment these days because they contribute measurable attacking output. Trent Alexander-Arnold’s crossing ability generates assists that show up in databases.
Andrew Robertson’s overlapping runs create goal-scoring opportunities that people notice. But ask either player and they’ll tell you their defensive work matters just as much, though nobody cares about successful tackles when there are Instagram-worthy goals to highlight.
