Breaking Down Those Player of the Year Votes

By: Martha | December 19th, 2006

Is he on the phone? In selecting the FIFA Player of the Year, each national team captain and coach voted for three players, ranking them first through third, and points were assigned appropriately (five for first, three for second, one for third) by the people who do the math. In the interest of full transparency, the powers that be at FIFA decided — perhaps unadvisedly — to reveal how each person voted, so lovers of Zidane know exactly whose houses to egg in retribution for his loss. And, because I have many other more important things to do, I spent a large chunk of time this morning examining the vote distribution. Below you will see my findings, shared in a selfless effort to save you having to wait while your Mac wrestles with Excel:

• Figo finished 16th! WOO HOO!

•Thierry Henry has more second place votes than anyone. Sadly, he had only 25 votes for first — nine fewer than Eto’o, who finished right behind him — which left him mired in the swamp of fourth.

•Thanks to the captains of Equatorial Guinea and Sri Lanka, Adriano got two points, a total that put him ahead of you, me, and Matrix.

•In a cruel joke by someone at FIFA, Tomas Rosicky appears at the bottom of the list of player rankings — with no votes. I mean, that’s harsh — what did he do, kill a puppy or something?

•Sorry, Azzurri: My new favorite team is Laos, because their captain (quite reasonably, I’m sure you’ll agree) put Figo at the top of his list. Thanks to your vote, Valasine Dalaphone, Figo hurdled Wayne Rooney, Franck Ribery, and Riquelme in the rankings.

•Eerily, only Graham Arnold of Australia and Steve McClaren of England — both of whom were only assistants during the World Cup — got the result exactly right in their votes.

•On the captain side, there is an odd number of “invalid votes.” What does this mean? Are they voting for people who don’t play football? The wrong kind of football? Was Tom Brady on some of these lists? Or did they perhaps cast votes for such useless hunks of flesh (Titus Bramble, anyone?) that FIFA officials just threw those votes out? Or did they try to cheat and slip votes for their own countrymen in there? Whatever the reason for invalidation, the Niger captain is unclear on the concept because of his three votes, only the one for Eto’o was allowed to stand.