The FIFA Ballon d'Or may be dead after France Football took back ownership of the Ballon d'Or award, but FIFA has a new plan for crowning the best players of 2016.
FIFA announced on Monday its new Best FIFA Football Awards, which will follow a different voting process than the previous award did, including a fan vote.
Votes from national team captains and coaches will account for 50 percent of selection process. The other 50 percent will be decided on selected media votes and an online public fan vote. The previous award was based only on captains, coaches and media votes.
The voting process will decide winners in eight categories, with shortlists being revealed this week:
• The Best FIFA Men’s Player 2016
• The Best FIFA Women’s Player 2016
• The Best FIFA Men’s Coach 2016
• The Best FIFA Women’s Coach 2016
• The FIFA Puskás Award 2016
• The FIFA Fair Play Award 2016
• The FIFA Fan Award 2016
• FIFA FIFPro World XI
In September, the soccer magazine France Football announced it was taking back the Ballon d'Or as its own award separate from FIFA. Accordingly, France Football named its shortlist for the newly-independent award last week. The honor, which was founded in 1956 to recognize the top player in Europe, had been combined with FIFA in 2010.
Before the FIFA Ballon d'Or was created, FIFA had its own best player award called the FIFA World Player of the Year. Since the women's award was founded in 2001, it has been called the FIFA Women's World Player. Now, both awards will have their names changed.
Just as with the previous awards, the winners of the new Best FIFA Football Awards will be named at FIFA's gala in January in Zurich.
Now, there will be two top awards for male footballers: the Ballon d'Or and the Best FIFA Men’s Player. Maybe it will mean someone other than Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi will win finally. Then again... maybe not.
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