2019 UEFA Awards: Top 5 contenders for Men's Player of the Year 

#2 Alisson Becker - Goalkeeper (Liverpool)

Alisson won his third Golden Glove of the year at the 2019 Copa America

Alisson made his breakthrough between the sticks at Roma, earning widespread praise for his reflexes and ability with the ball at his feet, and this led him to be christened the 'Messi of goalkeepers'.

His form took him to Liverpool, with The Reds signing him for a then world record fee of £66.8m and it is safe to say that this was money well spent, as the Brazilian international has brought a solution to what was a long running problem at Anfield.

With Liverpool, Alisson starred, playing all 38 matches as the Merseysiders took Manchester City all the way in what was one of the closest Premier League title races in history.

During the course of the campaign, Alisson embarked on an undefeated streak of 20 Premier League matches consecutively breaking the previous record for a Liverpool player held by Javier Mascherano.

In total, he kept 21 clean sheets to win the Golden Glove, also repeating the feat in the Champions League, with his match winning saves throughout the competition; particularly against Napoli in the group stage and Tottenham in the final proving extremely important to Liverpool winning their sixth European crown.

On the international scene, the 26-year-old was also instrumental to Brazil claiming the Copa America on home soil and he won the competition's Golden Glove to boot, conceding just one goal from six matches to make it a trio of awards for him in 2018/2019.

Being a goalkeeper is a very thankless task and very rarely are goalkeepers considered for individual awards (only one shotstopper has ever won the Ballon d'Or in its 62-year history), but even the most casual of observers cannot deny the brilliant campaign Alisson had in 2018/2019 and as such, he is more than a worthy winner of the 2019 UEFA Men's Player of the Year.