Argentina’s Lionel Messi and United State Women’s National Team’s Carli Lloyd were crowned FIFA’s Men and Women Player of the Year.
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The Argentina national team skipper on Monday won an unprecedented fifth FIFA Ballon d’Or award, given to the footballer of the year by world football’s governing body FIFA.
Last night, the soccer world had its own glitzy awards ceremony at FIFA’s annual gala in Zurich.
Here is her acceptance speech. “I always try to do my job as well as I possibly can”, said the Portuguese. The award was received by Gerald Asamoah, who promoted in the fall an awareness campaign for refugees in Germany, on behalf of all members of the world of soccer who have supported immigrants in Europe. “We all know it took 23 players to win the World Cup”, she said and thanked U.S. Soccer, its president Sunil Gulati and coach Jill Ellis. Next up: winning a third gold medal at this year’s Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro. Sasic also scored six goals in Canada to win the tournament Golden Boot, then retired at age 27.
He also accumulated the best minutes-per-goal rate – 80 – of anyone scoring a minimum of 10 goals across Europe’s top five leagues during 2015.
About the final, “The first thing she said was, ‘I got this, ‘ ” Galanis said the next day. “She embraced the challenge and the pressure and guided the team through the most competitive Women’s World Cup in history”. In between, the United States of America went unbeaten in 24 consecutive games which included the championship at the prestigious Algarve Cup in Portugal and the seven-game run to the FIFA Women’s World Cup title. Overcoming both doubts about the USA team’s capacity to win the crown and a lackluster performance in group play, the British-born, Virginia-schooled Ellis made adjustments in the knockout stage to steer the Americans to authoritative displays against top-ranked Germany in the semifinals and defending champion Japan in the final.
Having been part of the USWNT that lost on penalties to Japan in the 2011 final, the 33-year-old helped them avenge that defeat this summer in stunning style, with it more than fitting that Japan were the team they conquered to do so too.
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Barcelona’s head coach Luis Enrique was named the World Coach of the Year, beating out Pep Guardiola of Bayern Munich and Jorge Sampaoli of Chile.
