The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) has released the list of nominations for a number of awards including the 2019 Best Player of the Year and 2019 Best Coach of the Year awards.
FIFA released a set of 10 names for each of these two awards via its Twitter handle and has called on fans to vote for who they think should win the award.
The winners will be announced at the Best FIFA Football Awards show which is set to take place on 23 September in in Milan, Italy.
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The most popular award of the night will no doubt be the Best Player of the Year award. An expert panel will carry out a review and then decide on the top 3 players who will make the shortlist and these names will be announced in the coming weeks. The winner will be announced on 23 September.
The ten players who have made the shortlist are: Frenkie de Jong, Virgil van Dijk and Matthijs de Ligt who are from the Netherlands; Portugal’s captain Cristiano Ronaldo; Argentinean captain Lionel Messi; England captain Harry Kane; Sadio Mane from Senegal; Belgium captain Eden Hazard; Mohamed Salah from Egypt and Kylian Mbappe from France.
Fans are encouraged to send in their votes by going to the FIFA website and clicking on their football favourite player. The shortlist will be made on the performances and achievements of these players ranging from 16 July 2018 to 19 July 2019.
In a statement, FIFA said
Fan votes will be equally weighted alongside the votes of other key members of the footballing community – namely journalists, national team coaches and captains.
Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Sadio Mane are frontrunners to win this award!
The second award that will get a lot of attention is for the Best Coach of 2019. The validation period is the same as for the Best Player award and the judges will have their work cut out as there are some great coaches on the list.
The list of 10 nominees include: Djamel Belmadi, Erik ten Hag, Didier Deschamps, Fernando Santos, Marcelo Gallardo, Mauricio Pochettino, Ricardo Gareca, Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola. Jurgen Klopp who is the head coach for Liverpool is a frontrunner to win this award.
Some of the coaches that missed the shortlist include Massimiliano Allegri and Maurizio Sarri!
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