Fifa World Player of The Year: Fabio Cannavaro – Worthy?
December 19, 2006
Okay okay sorry to disappoint you people with another one of my i-wake-up-and-watch-the-news stories in here. I reckon this is much more worthy of a read than Fabio Cannavaro is to winning the official World Player of The Year presented by Fifa. First things first, congrats to him. Its great to see another Real Madrid player winning the award, for obvious reasons that is.
No? I’m a Madridista; a fan of theirs.
But seriously, do they(voters) look beyond the statistics? Sure enough, Fabio Cannavaro won the Italin Serie A, albeit fixing matches, and winning the World Cup with Italy. And so he ‘captained’ them to glory, then again, Juventus are a bunch of cheaters(unknowingly) and Italy can do nothing but dive(well known). I don’t know how these measure up to any ‘greatness’.
Sure he’s a good player. Decent positioning and a commander in defense. But seriously, Juventus and World Cup aside, he looks like an absolute flop at Real Madrid. Then again, so do many of the players they’ve signed over the years 
If there was any forms of meritocracy, he still didn’t deserve his title. I mean, John Terry’s such a great defender and skipper, and so are(in my opinion) Sergio Ramos and Rio Ferdinand.
Not to mention, this year is the first time a defender won the award. What laughable decision. I’m sure they have something like ‘Defender of The Year’ or something to reward the water-carriers of the team isn’t it?
How great is Fabio Cannavaro compared to the truly legendary Zinedine Zidane? (Note: both wore/wear No. 5 for Real Madrid.) Can he even dribble properly? I doubt so.
What do you deem greatness? Is it the ability to offer that magical moment of brilliance OR is it the ability to prevent the opponent from scoring a goal? I certainly prefer the former. And if the latter is true for you, isn’t a goalie a better suitor for such accolade?
Even if a defender HAD to win it, i ask, why(and how did) Fabio Cannavaro?
December 21, 2006 at 9:17 pm
Paolo Maldini, Roberto Carlos, Ashley Cole, Carlos Puyol, and Franz Beckenbauer are water-carriers? Are you serious? Every last one plays or played in defense. If a guy shuts down the best offensive guys all year (which I don’t think Cannavaro really did-this is not a pro-Cannavaro post), how can you name an offensive player the best in the world? Defense wins championships. In any sport. A good defense with a bad offense is better than a good offense with a bad defense.
December 21, 2006 at 9:33 pm
If my memory doesn’t fail me, none of whom the above mentioned has won the award. The greatest of irony is that Mr Cannavaro is such an incompetent winner. Just look at him in the Real Madrid v Recreativo match. Football, as a team sport, should instead reward someone who can single-handedly change the course of the game, and no defender can. Else we won’t see a back four. We’ll see One-Man-Cannavaro-Defense and a goalie plus 9 attackers. Then okay, let that man(or anyone else capable enough) win the award.