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2017 was a great year for football. As it always is... as it always will be.
Real Madrid won everything under the sun and have still ended the year a galaxy behind Barcelona, Italy didn't make it to the World Cup but Iceland and Panama did, while Egypt and Peru returned to the upper echelons of football.
As ever, everything was about Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, but the biggest headline of them all wasn't.
Here, then, are our 10 iconic football moments of 2017:
#10 Ajax supporters love for Abdelhak Nouri
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What happened to Abdelhak Nouri was nothing short of tragic.
On the 8th of July, whilst playing a pre-season friendly against Werder Bremen, he suffered a stroke - a result of cardiac arrhythmia - and fell down unconscious. He hasn't regained it since. With doctors declaring him more or less brain dead it looked like that would be it, another promising career brought to end by that most cruel and uncaring of phenomena - fate.
But then Ajax responded. As a club they did, and are doing, all they can to support Nouri and his family through this hell... but it's their supporters who reaffirmed all our faith in what a football club should be all about.
Forget the commercialisation and crass capitalistic excesses of the modern game - football, in its base form, is all about bringing people together and the love that Ajax fans and the general public have shown for one of their own is quite simply... beautiful.
Read further: Abdelhak Nouri, AFC Ajax, and the power of Hope
#9 Harry Kane breaks Alan Shearer's record and dethrones Lionel Messi
Rejected by his childhood club Arsenal, loaned out to Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich City, and Leicester, the lad from Walthamstow never had anything laid out on a plate for him. There was no red-carpet laid out, there was no fast-tracking under a loving manager's wing, there was no championing of his cause by Chairmen or supporters... there was just a lot of unstinting hard work - head bowed, back unbroken - and a lot of patience.
Now, just four years after completing that underwhelming loan spell at Leicester City, he is arguably the best pure striker in world football.
How can you not love Harry Kane?
He was derided as a one-season wonder when he broke into the Tottenham Hotspur first team in 2014-15 and hammered in 21 goals, but two successive Premier League golden boots on (a third is well on the way)... well...
This past week he wiped away any doubts by beating Alan Shearer's twenty-two-year-old record for most Premier League goals in a calendar year and by becoming the first person not named Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo to top the goalscoring charts for a calendar year across competitions in a decade.
One-season wonder? Hah.
#8 Marco Russ fights cancer and wins
In April of 2016, Eintracht Frankfurt captain Marco Russ failed a routine drug test ahead of a must-win game against fellow Bundesliga strugglers SV Darmstadt. When he adamantly rejected claims he had been taking performance-enhancing drugs - and when Police searches of his home and locker room turned up empty - the authorities urged him to undergo a thorough clinical examination.
You see, the only other way the test would have returned positive was if Russ was carrying a tumour.
The examination confirmed it - testicular cancer - but the evening after the club formally announced his diagnosis, Russ led his team out for the first leg of their relegation play-off against Nuremberg, many feared that would be his last ever match.
While he underwent intense chemotherapy, Frankfurt showcased the attributes that have led to many calling the Bundesliga the best league in the world and extended his contract till 2019.
And then, in February 2017, 285 days after his last game... Marco Russ strode out onto the Frankfurt pitch... 51,000 chanting his name.
He'd fought cancer, that most crippling of ailments, and he'd won. If that isn't worthy of celebration, what the hell is?
#7 The tears of Gianluigi Buffon
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Not for me, though, but for [Italy]. I’m sorry that we failed at something that could have also been important on a social level. That’s the only regret I have."
While the incompetent Giampiero Ventura ducked post-match interviews and avoided the press completely, Gianluigi Buffon stepped up to the make, eyes filled with tears, and issued a heartfelt apology to the 60,000 gathered at the San Siro - and the millions more watching at home - Italy had failed to qualify to the World Cup for the first time since 1958 and the world's favourite footballer couldn't hold back his emotions - not at his own disappointment, but because he felt he and his team had let his nation down.
It takes balls to man up and apologise - on behalf of others at that, Gigi himself did little wrong over the 180 minutes - but if there's anything we've learned in the two decades of watching Gianluigi Buffon masquerade as Superman in goal for Italy, Parma, and Juventus it's that the man has balls of steel.
And that we're lucky to have witnessed his career unfold in front of us.
Grazie Gigi. Do not cry.
P.S. Daniele De Rossi having a go at Ventura's staff for asking him to warm up instead of Lorenzo Insigne has to rank up there with the best things we've seen on the touchline ("send him on, not me. We need a win, not a draw")...
...while his gesture of clambering aboard the Swedish bus to apologise on behalf of the San Siro (who booed the Swedish national anthem) highlighted just what made this last generation of Italian footballers such charismatic characters.
They will be missed in Russia.
#6 Cristiano Ronaldo keeps the debate alive with 5th Ballon d'Or
Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Lionel Messi, Lionel Messi, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Cristiano Ronaldo
Over the past decade, two men have treated the most celebrated individual prize in world football - the hardest to get - as their own cuddle-toy, taking turns to take it home and declare unto the world that no era has ever seen two players play at such an unbelievably high level for such a sustained duration of time.
As my boss, Amar, keeps saying, Cristiano Ronaldo deserves all our love and respect simply for making sure that there is an actual debate over who the best player in the world is in an era inhabited by Lionel Andres Messi...and this past year he showed off the qualities that have allowed him to do so, stepping up for Real Madrid when it really mattered, almost single-handedly powering them to their (frankly ridiculous) 12th Champions League triumph and leading them to their first La Liga - European Cup double in half-a-century.
Now with the Ballon d'Or count at five apiece, Ronaldo's made sure that we'll never ever outlive that most irritating, most overpowering, most unavoidable of debates - "Messi vs Ronaldo: Who's better?"
#5 Alberto Brignoli wins Benevento's first ever Serie A point
Benevento Calcio have been around as a football club, under different guises, for 88 years. They've been a top-division club for only 6 months of that time, though.
And it's not been a happy time.
They lost their first 14 matches - a record in the top-flight for Europe's top five leagues - and it looked very much like that most unwanted of records would continue growing when they welcomed the might of AC Milan. Sure, the Rossoneri are a shadow of their former selves and are in the middle of one of the toughest rebuilding jobs in history - but come on, this is Milan.
With 94 minutes having been played, Milan were on course for a routine 2-1 win when the worst top-division club Europe has ever seen (statistically, of course) won a free-kick on the left flank. I'll let Benevento's keeper take it from here:
“The boss didn’t want me to go up,” said Alberto Brignoli afterwards. “He can be stubborn but I’m even more so. I said: ‘I’m going. I’m going, and that’s that.’ I leapt like a goalkeeper, not an attacker. They tell me that I looked like Aldo in the scene from [the movie] ‘Tre uomini e una gamba’ (Three men and one leg), and they are right. I was a bit crooked. I closed my eyes.”.... and he scored.
Benevento's first ever Serie A point, and it came with a cracking goal from their goalkeeper.
What football is all about... (start from 3:22 onwards)
#4 George Weah wins Liberia. Literally.
In his prime, especially in 1995 - the year he swept every award available to him - George Weah was everything that is stereotypically peddled around about African footballers as he combined blistering pace and staggering strength with unapologetic directness and a clinical finishing ability that would have put Gerd Muller to shame and terrorised defences across Italy and continental Europe.
But that's where the stereotypes end... for the rest of it is just racist slurs - Weah had an empathy and an intelligence rarely seen across the length and breadth of football, supporting Liberia's struggling football federation all by himself, knowing the importance of the sport to his people... and his foray into politics was motivated with similar empathy, to help Liberia and Liberians... and it's something his people have quite obviously responded to.
Now, as of December 27th, 2017 the world actually has a President who has won the Ballon d'Or and the FIFA World Player of the Year Award.
How f***ing cool is that?
#3 Lionel Messi shows the Bernabeu his name, Cristiano Ronaldo responds in kind
Those two.
There's no escaping them, I'm afraid.
When Barcelona sauntered up to the Bernabeu needing a win to keep the title race alive, Lionel Messi provided it with the most sublime of goals... and then celebrated with a defiance that hadn't been seen in the Argentine... ever.
I'd written about the deeper implications of that celebration here - Lionel Messi, a dog, bronca, and the loneliness of lost innocence - but even without it, you'd struggle to see a more iconic picture than Lionel Messi looking up at the imposing mass of the Bernabeu, lifting his index figure to indicate his standing in the pantheon, asking them to read the name on the back of the shirt he was holding up for them to see.
So, of course, a few months later, when Real Madrid rocked up to the Camp Nou as reigning champions of Spain (and Europe) to play the Super Copa, Cristiano Ronaldo did the exact same thing after scoring a beaut of a goal.
(watch from 4.02 onwards)
Anything you can do etcetera etcetera
#2 Lionel Messi hoists Argentina on his shoulders and takes them to the World Cup
Leo Messi has a chequered history with Argentina.
He's taken them to three major finals in the space of the last three years and he's seen them lose them all. He's fought with the administration. He's retired. He's un-retired.
At a crucial stage of the qualifying campaign, he was banned for three games by FIFA for questioning the profession of the referee's mother. A while later, having been struck by the realisation that Argentina without Lionel Messi was essentially the San Marino team with worse haircuts and that a resulting World Cup without Messi would be a disaster, FIFA reduced it to one match.
So he took the reprieve, hoisted Argentina on his slender shoulders and heaved his nation across the finish line with the most sublime hattrick of the year. Everything he did in that manic game against Ecuador (never a pleasant trip for a visiting football team, is the Andean nation) was sensational, a whirlwind of movement and dribbling and shooting and passing, it was 90 minutes of pure, unadulterated, Leo Messi magic.
F***, it was a sight to behold.
If you don't have the patience to sit through the entire video - start from 6:00, and revel in the glory that was Messi's third goal.
Honourable mentions
- Syria's failed tryst with destiny
Forget Bashar Al-Assad. Forget ISIS. Easier said than done if you live in the tragedy that is modern-day Syria, but their football team almost made it possible.
Tim Cahill, though, as is his wont, looked the fairytale in the eye and gave it that trademark double punch of his in Extra Time. In the end, over two legs, Australia beat Syria 3-2 to book their place in the World Cup.
Poor Syria, but in coming within touching distance of glory they went above and beyond what was expected of them as a collective. For that... Shukran!
- India scores first ever FIFA World Cup goal
Jeakson Thounaojam Singh etched his name into Indian sporting history by being the first from his nation to score in World Cup competition when he leapt high to thud in a header against Colombia.
Sure it was the U-17 World Cup, but as the saying goes... A small step for a Manipuri, a giant leap for India...
- Paulinho shuts the internet up
How dare Barcelona do this?
€40 million for a Tottenham reject. For a footballer playing in China. A 29-year-old midfielder. What the hell is wrong with the world!
Half-a-year after the internet exploded in a paroxysm of rage at the Catalans signing of Paulinho - just after the sale of Neymar - no one has a word to say against the Brazilian who has made Barcelona a much better team than the one he joined.
Like the man himself said - ‘Everyone said: “Bah, his career is over". Now I’m at Barça. That’s football'
- Jackson Follman and Chapecoense
Sometimes, words are not required:
Associacao Chapecoense de Futbol: Melancholy in Medellin
#1 Neymar's earth-shattering move to PSG underlines football's power-shift
ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHT MILLION POUNDS STERLING.
TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO MILLION EUROS.
TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY-THREE MILLION US DOLLARS.
I'm sorry, but I had to put it in caps. The fee that Paris Saint-Germain put on the table to activate Neymar Jr.'s release clause is the most ludicrous the world of football has seen (although it was soon matched by Barcelona themselves when they paid up €140 million for a player who 'commanded' a €15 million transfer fee the year before) but - and bear with me here - it isn't the money that's the talking point.
Neymar, Barcelona, PSG, and the 'values' of a modern footballer
It's the fact that Paris Saint-Germain rocked up to Barcelona... BARCA-FREAKING-LONA... and took away their second best player without as much a flicker of their eyebrows. Barcelona does this to people, it doesn't happen to them.
Until now, that is.
