The 2017 FIFA Best Football Awards ceremony took place at the London Palladium theatre yesterday evening in England. The awards have been previously called the FIFA Ballon d’Or since 2010 and been running for six years.
Fifa decided not to renew the deal in 2016, meaning the Ballon d’Or lost its ‘Fifa tag’ and reverted back to being voted for by journalists as a separate award, as Fifa’s The Best awards were created.
The Best Fifa Men’s Player award is voted for by a collection of journalists, national team coaches, national team captains and the general public – each with a 25 per cent weighting towards the overall vote.
Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo won the Best Player’s Award of the year for a second year running, beating Barcelona’s Messi and Neymar to the honour. Ronaldo got 43.16 % of the votes while Messi got 19.25 % and Neymar with 6.97%.
The Portugal international scored twice in Real’s 4-1 win over Juventus in the Champions League final and also found the net 25 times in 29 appearances as his club won La Liga for the first time in five years.
Ronaldo scooped his fifth individual FIFA accolade to match with Lionel Messi as a five-time winner of the award.
Messi voted for Barcelona team-mate Luis Suarez as his best player, while Ronaldo also opted for a team-mate at Madrid Luka Modric.
Giroud’s stunning ‘scorpion-kick’ scored against Crystal Palace in January beat off competition from Venezuela’s Deyna Castellanos and South African goalkeeper Oscarine Masuluke.
Chelsea manager Antonio Conte was shortlisted for men’s coach of the year but the Italian, who lifted the Premier League title in his first season in England, lost out to Zinedine Zidane.
Zidane became the first ever coach to win back-to-back Champions League titles as Real Madrid beat Juventus in the final in May. He also led Los Blancos to their first La Liga title in five years. Juventus boss Massimiliano Allegri was also shortlisted.
The full list of winners:
The Best FIFA Men’s Player: Cristiano Ronaldo
The Best FIFA Women’s Player: Lieke Martens
The Best FIFA Men’s Coach: Zinedine Zidane
The Best FIFA Women’s Coach: Sarina Wiegman
The Best FIFA Goalkeeper: Gianluigi Buffon
The FIFA Puskás Award: Olivier Giroud
The FIFA Fan Award: Celtic
The FIFA Fair Play Award: Francis Kone
The Best FIFPro XI:
Buffon (Juventus), Dani Alves (PSG), Leonardo Bonucci (AC Milan), Sergio Ramos, Marcelo (Real Madrid), Luka Modric, Toni Kroos (Real Madrid), Andreas Iniesta (Barcelona), Neymar (PSG), Lionel Messi (Barcelona), Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid).
