Lionel Messi of Barca Adjudged "The Best Player In The World"
Exactly one day after helping Barca secure the World Club Championship with his "Goal from the Heart", Lionel Messi was adjudged the as the FIFA World Player of the Year. It come as no surprise as everyone expected him to win this hands down. Messi secured 1073 points and the second placed Ronaldo secured 352 points. Barca's Xavi Hernandez came third with 196 points followed by Kaka with 190 points and Iniesta with 134 points. The inaugral FIFA Puskás Award for the 'most beautiful goal' of the year went Ronaldo for his goal against FC Porto. Ronaldo's goal secured 17.68 percent of total votes, meanwhile Iniesta's important strike against Chelsea came second bagging 15.64 percent of votes. Lionel Messi has expressed his hapines of becoming the first Argentinian to win the award - "It’s lovely to get this recognition from colleagues and coaches. That makes it even more important. The fact that I’m the first Argentinian to win it is also a great honour." FIFA Women’s World Player of the Year award went once again to Brazil's Marta, who incidently has created history by winning her fourth World Player award. The voting pattern went in expected lines but I still believe it is a great injustice to Xavi and Iniesta after being ranked at three and five. Xavi had a better season than Ronaldo for Spain and Barca but still finished thrid behind Ronaldo. The same with Iniesta who also had a very good season atleast better than what Kaka had. But it looks like this is the order of the day, you got to be flambouyant to secure votes in these awards.
Four FC Barcelona Players Feature in FIFA World XI
Meanwhile FIFA has announced a FIFA/FIFPro World XI - Iker Casillas in goal, Daniel Alves, Nemanja Vidic, John Terry and Patrice Evra in defense, a dream midfield line up of Steven Gerrard, Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta and a forward line up of Fernando Torres, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.