Paul's Alternative Football Review of the Year Awards
Okay, this is the first in a number of "awards" that I will be giving out, in this "alternative" review of the football (soccer) year.
The first award is for those players who didn't
quite live up to the hype in 2006.
Overhyped Player of the Year
Plenty of candidates for this one, including yes,
Landon Donovan (there's no bias here), but because of that it has to be a real "world class" player that gets bestowed with this "honour".
First candidate would be
Thierry Henry. He didn't contribute anything much at the World Cup finals, and went missing again on the big stage in the Champions’ League Final (or rather kept shooting at Barcelona keeper
Victor Valdes).
Secondly,
Andriy Shevchenko. Ever since his penalty miss in the 2005 Champions’ League Final shootout he doesn’t seem to be the same player. He had a poor World Cup, including missing again in a shootout with Switzerland in the round of 16 game (although Ukraine did win on this occasion), and that’s without even considering his start at Chelsea…
But there can be only one “winner”. And that is
Ronaldinho. The World Player of the Year played nothing like that at the World Cup as Brazil went home early, and is currently on an record barren spell for a Brazilian number 11, going 18 months (and counting) since his last goal for his country.
The Champions’ League Final was no better, and it needed veteran Henrik Larsson to turn the game around for Barcelona as Ronnie went missing on the big night.
His Liga form has been much better in the second half of the year, with goals like this one
http://youtube.com/watch?v=T9_7UhXLQYQ , but in my opinion, a “World Player of the Year” should perform on the biggest of stages, and Ronaldinho failed to do so.