Henry should win it I think. Award has been a farce in past seasons.

Henry, Lampard, Ronaldinho, Deco, Nedved, and Drogba are all deserving I think.

THis award need to take ito account 2 areas - how they have performed for their club and how they have performed for their country.

If u take club then it should be Deco. Why? European Cup winner
If u take country then its between Zagorakis (Euro 2004 winner) and the Brazilian players who won the Copa America.

None of the players have excelled on both stages making it harder to judge a deserved winner

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Lampard for me. I dont think last year he missed one game, and he scored plenty of goals in the Euro champs. I dont think you need to win anything for you to be crowned player of the year, because a team wins a match, not a players, which contradicts the opening criticism by gatecrasher. Also Henry would be a good contender, he was phenominal last season in the league.

I think Rooneys name is down due to the hype in the last 6 months which has surrounded him. Lets just hope that the voters have some sense this year.

IMO Kaka' is the player who most exeeded expectations (if you dont count
the greek national team, but that was a team effort, not the oustanding perforemance of one player). Kaka' was supposed to be a future replacement for Rui Costa, but instead he pushed Rui to the bench and owned Serie A last year. Also Henry had a great year, but he was expected to do good.

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"At that moment the Chosen One learned a powerfull lesson about iron claws: They hurt like crap man!"

TranceOasis your theory hasnt worked in the past so I dont think Kaka will come close to winning.

Previous winners have been:
Zidane & Ronaldo who are expected to be exceptional.

Should have made this thread a poll.

i dont think it should be exclusively related to trophy winning, though it does have a part to it. i neither think there has been a single player better than everyone else this year, just a large bunch of players all at a worldclass level. my votes would probably be on:

henry - seems to be the favourite. everyone mentions him as one of the finest strikers in the world, and one of the two best strikers on the premiership (the other being nistelrooy). he is an essential part of the arsenal squad which has been playing consistently very well for the entire year of 2004. has everything to win except some kind of an international trophy.

buffon - why not a keeper? i must say i haven't got the chance to watch much of serie a, but most games i see from this guy he puts out excellent perfomances. he was at top form on euro, clearly at a better form that his national team. against him he just has the fact that oliver kahn was up there not long ago, and was much more hyped.

ronaldinho - i'm basing this on just the last few matches for barcelona but he has been absolutely fantastic there. he's the super creative and technical player that everybody likes to see, on top form.

must agree also on lampard and kaká being nice choices. as for deco, well yes he was essential at porto and is at brilliant form at barca, but during the past season i remember him being in poor/average form for a while, he seems a little bit over-rated to me.

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sempre contra a corrente do jogo

like it or not it's gonna be Adriano

i don't wanna see Deco or some crappy greek player

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"A style that's impossible to define. Prog? Hardly. Tech house? Not boring enough. It's like trippy twisted acid house but deep and funky. See, I told you - impossible."

adriano seems like an excellent player to me but he only became really famous the last few months so i don't see him as a realistic contender

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sempre contra a corrente do jogo

STEVEN GERRARD!

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Tune of the moment

Although Henry seems to be the favorite , hes only done well in the league.. for france and in the champions league hes about average so i dont think he deserves to win ... it should be between kaka, deco , adriano and shevchenko who is very underrated and imo is definaltely among the top 3 strikers in the world.


Besides ronaldo who did good i dont know what the hell the rest of the galacticos are doing on the list ... it sucks that the selectors place players on the list just for the sake of their reputation since they prolly fear some sort of backlash if they do not place beckham , zidane and the likes since they have such a big fan follwing

as far as rooney winning goes it looks highly unlikely since the only thing that has put him into contention is 4 goals at euro 2004 he barely made the starting lineup at everton

It's all a joke to me, like why are Giggs, Cafu, Gerrard, Owen on there? Where is Valeron, Maniche, Guily, Pirlo, Gudjohnson ect? They should just say when it is a Euro or WC year that this isn't based on club performance because honesly guys like Zagorakis and Baros did nothing significant on their club teams to get on this list and to put 3 weeks of soccer over 10 months of hard club action is ridiculous to me.

I never understood if this award is based on the best player over the year, or the best player at the time of the voting, but every year it turns out the winner never represents either one. With their being 11 positions that you can possibly play in soccer, this award is like judging music and movies where opinion turns into fact (to those who still believe whatever FIFA says is the truth, and those people need medication) when the award is given out. Another horrible footnote in FIFA's history book.

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quote:

Originally posted by ChemEnhanced any party from 2003 and back I only remember bits and pieces...i've combined those memories into one awesome party