Desperate to blow a smokescreen masking the impending World Cup coronation of Saudi Arabia as 2036 hosts, FIFA has opened fan voting for a raft of awards: Best Player, Best Coach, Best Goalkeeper (all with male & female candidates), Marta Award (best female goal), Puskás Award (best male goal) & Fan Award. Voting opened on November 28th and will close on December 10th, and voters must be registered with FIFA.com.
One fascinating aspect of this process are the lengths FIFA are going through to ensure “transparency” in the voting. As any fan with half a brain knows, FIFAs commitment to fair and transparent process is so iron-clad that the awarding of host nation to Saudi Arabia will be the standard by which future electoral processes are judged. Apologies, I forgot to turn off my sarcasm font.

In a sly wink to those who doubt FIFA’s integrity they included this gem on their page: “Still having doubts about the voting system?” followed by a link to the official rules.
Hooligan’s Ruling on the Rules
A close perusal of this (blessedly) short rules document doesn’t reveal anything too nefarious, though I do feel a journalistic obligation to call out a handful of things.
- Article 2 – The awards only cover achievements between August 21, 2023 and August 20, 2024. So, the current seasons (club, national or otherwise) should NOT be considered. All things aside, nothing surprising about this.
- Article 4 – Nominations are made by FIFA “in collaboration with football stakeholders.” Note, these stakeholders are neither defined nor named. Nominations are then “reviewed by a panel of FIFA football experts.” Again, no definition or additional information is provided.
- Article 5 – In the event of a tie during nominations, an “international jury comprising national-team captains, national-team coaches, representatives of the media and fans” will adjudicate. So one must assume these knowledgeable folks are NOT in the group(s) mentioned in Article 4.
- Articles 6 & 7 – Men’s & Women’s awards are voted by four different blocks, each with 25% of the total. These blocks are:
- Current coaches of all men’s national teams (one per team)
- Current captains of all men’s national teams (one per team)
- One specialist journalist from each territory represented by a national team
- Fans.
- Article 8 – Basically, any member of a block is prohibited from voting for themselves, but can vote for teammates or other fellow countrymen/women.
- Articles 9, 10, 11 & 12 spell out the voting details and how to apply tiebreakers.
- Articles 13, 14 & 15 are legalistic gobbledigook.
- Articles 16 & 17 basically state that only FIFA can arbitrate any dispute or issue, and that they reserve the right to exclude any vote, for any reason, at their sole discretion, without notifying the voter or publishing that this nullification occurred.
Hm.
In short, you can vote, but in reality FIFA can just pick whomever they want and nobody would ever know. I’m not saying they’ll do this. But they can. Remember, this is an organization who commissioned a subcommittee to investigate their own conduct during the Qatar World Cup regarding workers compensation, only to ignore that report’s major suggestion and earmark that money for “international development.”
Voting is Still Good
All cynicism aside, go vote. I’ve provided direct links to the respective awards pages below, along with any other relevant info.
- Marta Award (Best Female Goal) – They do have embedded links where you can see all the goals before voting.
- Refreshingly, only one nominee in this list is up for Best Player.
- Marta is nominated in the award named after her. Awkward?
- Puskás Award (Best Male Goal) – They do have embedded links where you can see all the goals before voting.
- None of the nominees is also up for Best Player.
- Goalkeeper (Female)
- Goalkeeper (Male)
- Women’s Coach
- 50% female nominees this year. An improvement?
- Men’s Coach
- 100% male nominees this year. Same as before. And the year before that, ad infinitum.
- Player (Female)
- 16 nominees here.
- Player (Male)
- 11 nominees here. Why five fewer than the women? It’s a good question, and all the “transparency” in the world doesn’t provide an answer.
Leave a Reply