The nominees for the 2019 Best Football Awards have been revealed by Fifa on Wednesday in four of the six categories.
Cristiano Ronaldo, Frankie DeJong, Matthijs de Ligt, Eden Hazard, Harry Kane, Sadio Mane, Kylian Mbappe, Lionel Messi, Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk will battle for the most prestigious individual award – The Best Footballer of the Year 2019.
A list of ten candidates for The Best Fifa Men’s Coach 2019 was drawn up by a panel of Fifa legends.
The nominees are; France coach Didier Deschamps, Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, Algeria’s national team coach Djamel Belmadi, Mauricio Pochettino, Marcelo Gallardo, Ricardo Gareca, Tite, Fernando Santos and Erik ten Hag.
Nominees for the best women’s coach are; USA’s Jill Ellis, England’s Phil Neville, Joe Montemurro, Reynald Pedros, Milena Bertolini, Futoshi Ikeda, Peter Gerhardsson, Antonia Is, Paul Riley and Sarina Wiegman.
Nominees for Women’s player; Alex Morgan, Vivianne Miedema, Rose Lavelle, Sam Kerr, Amandine Henry, Ada S Hegerberg, Caroline Hansen, Julie Johnston Ertz, Lucy Bronze, Wendie Renard, Ellen White and Megan Rapinoe.
FIFA’s window of consideration for nominees was 25th May 2018 to 7th July 2019 inclusive.
The six categories that will be awarded will be; The Best FIFA Men’s Player, The Best FIFA Women’s Player, The Best FIFA Men’s Coach, The Best FIFA Women’s Coach, FIFA Puskas Award and The FIFA Fan Award
The world football governing body will host their annual awards on 23rd September in Milan 2019.
This is the fourth edition of the Best Fifa Football Awards, set up after football’s world governing body ended its association with the Ballon d’Or.
A version of the Ballon d’Or has been awarded by France Football magazine since 1956, but was merged with Fifa’s World Footballer of the Year award from 2010 to 2015.
The governing body then introduced the Best Fifa Football Awards, with Portugal international Ronaldo the first recipient of its main prize in January 2017.
Voting for the player and coach categories is conducted by national team captains and managers, selected journalists and an online poll from fans. Each account for 25% of the total.
Real Madrid midfielder Luka Modric won the men’s prize for best player in 2018 – the first time in 11 years Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi failed to come out on top in a world footballer of the year award.
