This article is about the men's player of the year award from 1991 to 2009, and the women's player of the year award from 2001 to 2015. For the men's player of the year award from 2010 to 2015, seeFIFA Ballon d'Or. For the men's award since 2016, seeThe Best FIFA Men's Player. For the women's award since 2016, seeThe Best FIFA Women's Player.
FIFA World Player of the Year
Ronaldo, the youngest recipient of the award aged 20, won it three times.
TheFIFA World Player of the Year was anassociation football award presented annually by the sport's governing body,FIFA, between 1991 and 2015 at theFIFA World Player Gala. Coaches and captains of international teams and media representatives selected the player they deem to have performed the best in the previous calendar year.
Originally a single award for the world's best men's player, parallel awards for men and women were awarded from 2001 to 2009. The men's award was subsumed into theFIFA Ballon d'Or in 2010 while the women's award remained until 2015. After 2015 both men's and women's awards became part ofThe Best FIFA Football Awards.
During the men's era, Brazilian players won 8 out of 19 years, compared to three wins – the second most – for French players. In terms of individual players, Brazil again led with five, followed by Italy and Portugal with two each.[1][2] The youngest winner wasRonaldo, who won at 20 years old in 1996, and the oldest winner wasFabio Cannavaro, who won aged 33 in 2006.[3][4] Ronaldo andZinedine Zidane each won the award three times, while Ronaldo andRonaldinho were the only players to win in successive years. From 2010 to 2015, the equivalent men's award was theFIFA Ballon d'Or, following a merging of the FIFA World Player of the Year and theFrance Football Ballon d'Or awards.[5][6] Since 2016, the awards have been replaced byThe Best FIFA Men's Player andThe Best FIFA Women's Player awards.[7]
Eight women's footballers – three Germans, three Americans, one Brazilian, and one Japanese – have won the award.Marta, the youngest recipient at age 20 in 2006, has won five successive awards, the most of any player.Birgit Prinz won three times in a row andMia Hamm won twice in a row. The oldest winner isNadine Angerer, who was 35 when she won in 2013; she is also the onlygoalkeeper of either sex to win.
The winners are chosen by the coaches and captains of national teams as well as by international media representatives invited by FIFA.[8] In a voting system based onpositional voting, each voter is allotted three votes, worth five points, three points and one point, and the three finalists are ordered based on total number of points. Following criticism from some sections of the media over nominations in previous years, FIFA has since 2004 provided shortlists from which its voters can select their choices.[9]
A single article from the Portuguese daily newspaperA Bola reporting about the 1992 award mentions the former award winnersLothar Matthäus in 1991, but alsoDiego Maradona in 1990. There is no other evidence of the award being presented by FIFA prior to 1991.[10]
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