Already distinguished by UEFA, Robert Lewandowski and Pernille Harder are unusual favorites to win Thursday (7:00 p.m.) the Fifa “The Best” awards for best player of the year, supreme football awards in 2020 … Ballon d’Or fault.
So far, the Polish striker Bayern has never been able to debunk the duo Ronaldo-Messi, the two other finalists, who shared three of the four “The Best” trophies and eleven of the last twelve Ballons d’Or , only yielding to Croatian Luka Modric in 2018.
But at 32, Lewy was one of the great architects of Bayern’s Championship-Cup-League treble, stacking 34 goals in the Bundesliga and 15 on the European stage in 2019-2020. And, crowned best UEFA player at the start of October, he attacked 2020-2021 on a similar basis.
With his first coronation in C1 in August, erasing the Champions League final lost in 2013 with Dortmund, the Pole “deserved” this trophy “like no one else. It was the season of his life”, pleads the president from the Bavarian club, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge.
The Pole could certainly have dreamed of a Ballon d’Or, he who has never been on the podium. But the award awarded by France Football was canceled for the first time since 1956, as the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the season.
Messi, king of a pale Barça
Executioner of the Bundesliga defenses, the gunner has long suffered from being less recognized on the international scene, penalized by a weak Polish selection but also by his difficulty in being decisive in the cleaver matches of C1.
If he did not score in the final against Paris-SG (1-0), he offered fireworks in the round of 16 against Chelsea (three goals and four assists), and added a goal in the quarters during the festival against Barcelona (8-2) and one in the semi-final to leave Lyon (3-0).
In front of him, the Argentinian Lionel Messi, 33, pocketed in 2019-2020 a seventh title of top scorer in La Liga, before a summer agitated by his desires to start. Especially since his Barça, crumbly in defense and sluggish in attack, ceded the championship to Real, left C1 on the historic beating against Bayern, and seems already behind in the race for the title in La Liga this season.
At 35, Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo is having a quieter day at Juventus, with two national titles since his arrival in the summer of 2018 and 37 goals in the 2019-2020 season, but he could suffer from the elimination of the Bianconeri against OL in the round of 16 of C1.
Fox in ambush
Among the women, the race promises to be more open to succeed the American Megan Rapinoe: the Danish Pernille Harder, transferred to Chelsea at the start of the season, will be opposed to the English defender of Manchester City Lucy Bronze and the French Wendie Renard , both sacred with Lyon this summer in the Champions League… against Wolfsburg where Harder was playing.
Renard “is a world-class player”, formidable in the air and “really difficult to face”, greeted Monday Christie Pearce Rampone, former defender and double world champion with the United States, on the site of Fifa.
Argentina’s Marcelo Bielsa, who landed a promotion to the Premier League with Leeds, is a candidate for the male coach of the year award, alongside Germans Hansi Flick (Bayern Munich) and Jürgen Klopp (Liverpool).
On the women’s side, Frenchman Jean-Luc Vasseur (Lyon) is one of the finalists along with Chelsea manager Emma Hayes and Netherlands coach Sarina Wiegman.
The winners of the “The Best” awards are chosen by a vote of the captains and coaches of the national teams, a group of more than 200 journalists, as well as supporters consulted online from 25 November to 9 December.
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