Football's Individual Awards: An exercise in vainglory and futility

The

ideography

of the awards

In a way, the individual awards are a product of popularity and clever marketing. They do not subsist on any scientific analyses or intelligent design. They are at the best-tinted lens with vested interests having a panoply of chromes.

In all honesty, the words "the best"is polysemic in nature. The interpretations are myriad and the appropriation of those meanings is what Celeste Condit says is poly-variant. Understandably, this incorporated our own biases and emotional proclivities like Manuel Neuer opting for Toni Kroos, Robert Lewandowski and Arturo Vidal in his three nominations.

I am sure if allowed, Ronaldo would put his name in all the three places. He certainly would not pick Messi which apparently he did not. Messi, however, had his arch-nemesis in the third spot.

The Ballon d'Or is determined by journalists who can hardly be vouchsafed as custodian of immune oversight. "The FIFA award" is voted on by national team captains, national team coaches and journalists. Add to them the fans' vote with online registration and vote. We all know, especially the troll kings of powers in India, how reliant the online vote is with the all the bots etc.

The diverse strokes of diverse folks who judge diverse attributes produce highly subjective results. I mean in terms of pure ability Modric is nowhere near Messi. He may be more aesthetic than Ronaldo but he does not win matches even half as much as the Portuguese.

Sometimes it is just about winning trophies. But given the fact that Sergio Ramos arm dragged Mohamed Salah out of the final of Champions League must arrogate some credit to the win. Without the unfortunate injury, we might have a Liverpool player with the accolade. He certainly had a stellar club season than Modric.

Arguably, Perisic had a better World Cup than Modric and certainly much better semi-final and final.

With the glory of scoring of goals almost guaranteed to grab headlines, ink unforgettable memories and cloud intellectual breakdown of the games themselves, Modric’s accomplishment is refreshing but hardly important or significant to the game itself.

I do not suggest that it derogates his success but only highlights the inane indulgence with the individual. After all, he will never be as popular or get as many Twitter or Facebook followers as Ronaldo or Messi.

As a corollary, individually, I doubt that Messi and Ronaldo (with 5 awards each) have had five times the impact and brilliance of Maradona and Pele who have a combined haul of one shared award( the Player of the Century award- popular votes went to Maradona while journalist and coaches voted for Pele).

It is democratic but even democracy seldom appreciates merit with equivalence. The general elections of the likes in India and the USA have certainly given enough evidence to suggest otherwise, even if the arena is far greener and manifest in football than politics.

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