3 reasons why Ronaldo must be named UEFA Men's Best Player

#2 The increase in number of individual awards means there are other opportunities for Modric and Salah

Modric's World Cup performance deserves an individual

honor

One common complaint in the last decade since Ronaldo and Messi's duopoly over individual awards has been the insignificance attached to World Cup performance in determining the best player in the world.

The merging of the Ballon d'Or with the FIFA award, together with Ronaldo and Messi's otherworldly performance over the course of a nine month season meant that it was always going to be a tough ask for any player to dethrone them on the basis of seven matches at the World Cup.

The 2010 and 2014 editions of the Ballon d'Or were won by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo respectively despite the Argentine not registering a single goal in South Africa, while Ronaldo could only contribute one goal in Portugal's group stage exit in Brazil.

Criticisms were raised, and rightly so, as historically, all individual awards in a World Cup year used to go to the best performing player at the World Cup, regardless of his performances elsewhere. A good example of this would be hitherto unknown Salvatore Schillacci who finished as runner up to Lothar Matthaus in the 1990 Ballon d'Or awards on the back of his Golden Boot and Golden Ball winning performance at Italia '90.

With the separation of the awards and the creation of the FIFA Best in 2016, there now exists an opportunity for World Cup performance to be used as a yardstick once more in determining the best player in the world, and Luka Modric stands in good stead to win the FIFA Best award, ditto Salah with the Ballon d';Or.

However, for the UEFA Best Men's Player award, they should each take the backseat and allow Ronaldo glow in the euphoria of lifting the individual trophy for the third consecutive season.