Any individual award in a team sport comes laced with questions over its merit, but the Puskas award is surely the oddest of all.
We can stomach the Ballon D’Or – it has history, kudos and, in a world where individuals are often celebrated more than teams, retains plenty of clout. Whether the same is true of Fifa’s The Best awards, effectively a rip-off and expansion of the Ballon D’Or, is open to debate, but its headline winners do at least seem to care.
The Puskas award is different. It has no history (it was the brainchild of now-disgraced – and at the time only occasionally disgraceful – Sepp Blatter in 2009) and its kudos is open to cynical interpretation. A great player clearly makes a significant difference to an entire season. A great goal, at best, makes a big difference to one match. In the case of Erik Lamela, this year’s winner, he was promptly sent off and his team lost the north London derby. Given that Tottenham finished three points outside the Europa League places, they would have traded the goal for the win.
Perhaps none of that context really matters. Blatter’s original intention was to reward the most aesthetically significant goal of the year, after all. But then it’s interesting that four of the last five winners of this award have scored their goals in the Premier League: Lamela, Son Heung-Min, Mohamed Salah and Olivier Giroud.
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How many goals did these players beat to win the award? In the last two years, there have been nominations from top flights on four continents, so let’s assume every Fifa nation is included (quick maths: 211 nations, 16 teams per league – very rough average, 2.5 goals per game = approximately 125,000). This year a second-tier goal was included in the nominations, so we better multiply that by two. And then there’s women’s football; let’s add on another 50,000 goals (probably stingy, particularly if you’ve watched Barcelona femeni this season). Oh, and international football too. A conservative estimate would be a total pool of 300,000 goals and a Premier League contribution of 0.3 per cent.
For the Premier League to win the award once would be impressive. To win it four times in five years would make them lottery winners if they hadn’t already earnt that privilege through vast swathes of broadcasting revenues. The talent in the league is a factor, but only to a point. Last year, 35-year old Hlompho Kekana of South African side Mamelodi Sundowns was nominated. Brilliant, beautiful goals are scored every week by players of all abilities.
In part this is a result of the process. Until 2018, the winner was decided purely by public voting, a system that was changed in 2018 after Salah’s goal against Everton (and it was a lovely goal, but) dominated the voting. Now the ultimate winner is picked by a panel of pundits, but the public vote still determines the top three. Dominant league plus public vote usually ends one way.
This is a free choice, of course. That makes me a columnist placing themselves at the centre of two memes, the old man shouting at clouds and Professor “No, it’s the children who are wrong” Skinner. Lovers of football are split by which goals please them most – volleys, free-kicks, shots from the halfway line, team goals, dribbles from your own half and rabonas.
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But the dominance of the Premier League over the Puskas award is reflective of its dominance in general. If we factor in the social media impact, the notoriety of the match and the standard of the league in the decision (which was never the original intention), it has a huge advantage.
It also passes comment on football in 2022 that an award that was won by players in five club and three international competitions in its first eight years, for which every professional player in the world is eligible, has now seemingly been consumed by the deafening power of the Premier League. Meritocracy is nothing, now; notoriety is everything.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3IaxSna
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