3 reasons why Modric deserves to win the FIFA Best award

FIFA last week released a 10-man shortlist for the Best Men's Player, to be awarded at The Best FIFA Awards ceremony slated to take place in London on 24 September 2018. The shortlist reads like a who's who in football, including Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe.

While Ronaldo is the favourite to retain the award for the third consecutive year, with eternal rival Lionel Messi not too far behind, owing to their extra-terrestrial performances over the course of their careers, it is another who most deserves the award.

Luka Modric has been the standard bearer for midfielders in the last five seasons, and he raised the bar further with a player-of-the-tournament performance to help his country attain a second place finish in the World Cup last month.

The 32-year-old has maintained his elite level of performance since his 2012 transfer to Real Madrid from Tottenham, and owing to his performances over the last year, deserves to be named the FIFA Best Men's Player, here are three reasons backing him up.

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#3 The FIFA Awards in a World Cup year should reward World Cup performances

The World Cup is the grandest stage in football, and a spectacular performance at it guarantees a player immortality in the annals of football history. Players like Pele, Franz Beckenbauer, Gerd Muller, Johann Cruyff, Diego Maradona, Paolo Rossi, Lothar Matthaus, Romario, Zinedine Zidane and Ronaldo De Lima are still spoken of mythically till this day owing to their incredible performance at the World Cup.

In times gone by, the now-defunct FIFA World Best Player in any World Cup year was awarded to the best player from the World Cup winning team. Lothar Matthaus in 1991, Romario in 1994, Zinedine Zidane in 1998, Ronaldo De Lima in 2002 and Fabio Cannavaro in 2006.

The merging of the awards with the Ballon d'Or in 2009, and the emergence of the extra-terrestrials that are Ronaldo and Messi changed all that, as the awards became a personal contest between the duo and World Cup performance took a backseat in determining the best player in the world.

With the separation of the awards in 2016, and the 'decline' of Messi and Ronaldo, it is time to respect the sanctity of the World Cup by using it as a yardstick to determine who the best player in the world is, and that player should be Luka Modric.

The former Dinamo Zagreb midfielder helped his nation rise above corruption trials, a struggling economy back home and a dissenting colleague to put in a beautiful team performance, and win the World over despite their second-place finish.

Despite having a personal court case for complicity in corruption allegations, Modric rose above that to put in an emphatic emphatic performance at the World Cup, captaining Croatia to a runners-up finish, providing inspiration to lift his teammates as they saw out their opponents in three gruelling extra-time periods in all their knock-out fixtures, and was deservedly named the Golden Ball Winner in Russia.

By cirtue of being the best player at the World Cup, Modric deserves to be named the best player in the world.

#2 He also had a good season with Real Madrid

Luka Modric also won the Champions League last season

In addition to his World Cup performance, Modric also starred as Real Madrid won the Champions League last season, playing in 14 out of 15 matches as Los Blancos won Europe's premier club competition for the third consecutive season.

It is an advantage which puts Modric in good stead, as none of the other major contenders had both a good season with their club and a strong performance at the World Cup.

Modric's vision, technique and creativity from midfield has been key to Real Madrid's success in recent seasons, as his precision in passing and ability to dictate play from midfield helps open up spaces for his teammates to explore, and at no time was this more evident than last season in the Champions League, where Real Madrid were on the back foot for most of their knock-out ties, and needed quick breaks on the counter to score.

Modric was usually the chief instigator of the moves, his pin-point long-range passes helped bypass the midfield of many teams en route Real Madrid scoring many of their goals.

Individual awards reward a player who was adjudged to have been the best and most consistent footballer over the year in review, and with proof of his incredible performance for club and country through the last year, Modric should be named the FIFA Best Men's Player.

#1 It is time for a new face

Ronaldo and Messi have utterly dominated football in the last decade

The Ronaldo and Messi rivalry is well documented, over the last ten years, they have been engaged in an exclusive battle to determine who the best in the world is, setting more records than some clubs have had players, and winning numerous personal accolades.

All individual award ceremonies in the last decade had been turned into a playground for the two, a duopoly where all awards podiums were a matter of Messi, Ronaldo and which mortal would occupy third place (Kaka himself said he was the last human to win the Ballon d'Or in 2007).

It became a question of who between the pair would win the awards, as their performance levels were so otherworldly that no other player could even contemplate being in the top two. Prestigious awards such as the Ballon d'Or lost its appeal, as it was already a fore-given that one of Messi or Ronaldo would win it even before a ball was kicked in anger to begin the season.

However, after ten years, it has become a bit boring, the debate about who is the better between the two has only increased with each passing year, with almost equal number of supporters on each side, the intensity of the debate has been so intense, that it spawned a website dedicated to just the stats and records of the two and a Wikipedia page dedicated to the rivalry.

Yet, the debate has not been settled and probably never will.

It is time for fans and the game of football to accept Messi and Ronaldo together as the best of their generation and among the greatest of all time, because trying to decide the better of the pair is an exercise in futility.

There is also something beautifully poetic about ending their rivalry this year, as the greatest sporting rivalry in footballing and possibly sporting history, which was so intense that a winner couldn't be convincingly picked came to an end in its tenth year, with two of the best players in that generation by far winning exactly 5 best individual player awards each, and would lend more credence to the fact that neither was the superior player.

This would be a fitting end to their story, having it end any other way would be an unbefitting climax.

After so many years of grabbing all the headlines and awards, it is time for a new face to be crowned, and Modric has been one of the best of the rests during Messi and Ronaldo's dominance, so it is only apt that he be the player to usher in the new era.