Five Premier League players make FIFA’s Best Men’s Player Shortlist

England owns the 11-men FIFA’s Best Men’s Shortlist with five players named and four of them coming from Liverpool.

Does it come as a surprise that Liverpool players are the most named in the popularity contest? Nope, there is no surprise! All of those making the list had a strong hand in Liverpool’s recent success.

The one other Premier League man [Kevin de Bruyne] was also a key figure to his side and was the creator of all things special last season. However, if world-class recognises world-class, the man that is the solo rep for the Bundesliga is taking the crown to sit on the throne this time around.

The shortlisted names for the Best Men’s Player are:

Premier League

1. Kevin de Bruyne – Manchester City/Belgium
2. Sadio Mane – Liverpool/Senegal
3. Mohamed Salah – Liverpool/Egypt
4. Thiago Alcantara – Liverpool/Spain
5. Virgil van Dijk – Liverpool/Netherlands

La Liga

1. Lionel Messi – Barcelona/Argentia 
2. Sergio Ramos – Real Madrid/Spain

Ligue 1

1. Neymar Jr – PSG/Brazil 
2. Kylian Mbappe – PSG/France

Serie A

1. Cristiano Ronaldo – Juventus/Portugal

Bundesliga

1. Robert Lewandowski/Poland

Last year’s winner was met with frowns

Last year 2019, one of the greatest players to ever grace the football stage took the award, which was his sixth time he’s been gifted it. This time, however, there were many divided opinions on whether he deserved it or not.

We all know over the last decade or so, there really have only been two players worthy of the award on many occasions. They are the ageing duo of Ronaldo and Messi. In more recent times other players were busy playing at an elite level.

They were busy bringing their respective clubs to the summit of whatever they were playing for, while Barcelona and Real Madrid were not as lethal as we’ve come accustomed to over the years. Honestly, winning only the league is just not good enough for either of the two Spanish rivals.

Will it be the same injustice this time around?

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This time, we should not be seeing either of the world’s two best players taking the accolade home. There have been some top performers throughout 2020, and missing the event due to COVID, FIFA has to take a lot of football into consideration.

Of those who have been nominated for FIFA’s The Best Men’s Player shortlist, there really is only one winner (in my mind and is of my opinion). That man is none other than Robert Lewandowski, the only player from the German Bundesliga.

Individually, he was at a completely higher level above the rest. Together with his team, they were unstoppable as they took everything post-COVID lockdown.

They won the Bundesliga for the 29th time. They took the DFB-Pokal Cup, and then finally beating PSG to Champions League glory for the sixth time, equalling Liverpool’s European Cup record.

Lewandowski in his 10 Champions League starts picked up 15 goals and six assists. In their top-flight triumph, he played 31 games, scoring a large total of 34 goals and assisted a further 4 more.

Overall in all competitions, he took the pitch 47 times, banged the back of the net 55 times, and helped another teammate out 10 times with an assist. The most amazing stat of it all… only seven of his goals came from the penalty spot.

He deserves the award over everybody else. A treble winner (a quadruple winner if you include the DFL-Supercup). He came just two goals shy of taking the Golden Shoe for 2019-2020. Ciro Immobile’s 36 Serie A goals beat him to the top award.

Quite frankly, no Premier League player should be touching the award, neither should anybody else on this list… Period!