At the end of each year, major annual award ceremonies are held one after another, and different controversies are naturally derived from various systems, evaluations, and mobilization methods. The ballon d'Or award of "French Football" awarded earlier, Messi beat Lewandowski to win the award, becoming the topic of tea in the international football world; but there was originally a "best of the year", Messi only ranked 24, Lewandowski only won 17, C Ronaldo even as low as 39, and the dominant one was Real Madrid's Alaba? It is better to start with the behind-the-scenes unit and the authoritative football data agency "Swiss Football Observatory" (Swiss Football Observatory).
Founded in 2005 by two academics under the umbrella of the International Sports Research Centre (CIES), the four-member team currently focuses on quantifying players' performance on the field, team off-court operations and transfer market ecology, with the goal of promoting the sustainable development of football. Its statistical weekly newspaper and monthly special reports, which are close to 1 million views per year, have become a first-hand source of football news.
This time, the so-called Players of the Year is actually derived from a statistical method called "experience capital" and is divided into two groups of goalkeepers and outfield players: as of the first 11 months of this year, the first three goalkeepers are Real Madrid's Thibaut Courtois and Atletico Madrid's Jan Oblak), as well as Bayern Munich's Manuel Neuer, are relatively "reliable"; in contrast, the first three players in the field are all defenders, followed by Manchester City defender Rúben Dias, and Inter Milan defender Milan Kriniar, and Real Madrid duo Casemiro and Benzema are the top midfielders and strikers respectively.
The results seem to be "abnormal", in fact, as long as you understand the statistical method, it is not difficult to find the mystery. In simple terms, each player will first calculate the league/international coefficient of the team/national team he plays for (with reference to the past five years), and combine the team's performance (with reference to the past year) to derive the team coefficient, and then accumulate the corresponding "experience capital" according to his playing time. Therefore, the elements that are easy to achieve high scores include playing for strong teams, clubs and national teams are the same as the main force, and the frequent battles are still iron men (such as the top five players in the field area, and this season's competitions have been worn for more than 5,000 minutes), which can be described as "heavenly reward".
From the past three top winners are Ivan Rakitic, Van Dijk and Andrew Robertson, objective statistics have indeed helped to eliminate the "star effect" or the monopoly of attacking players to some extent, but C Ronaldo and Messi have included five of them in the six editions in 2012-17. Of course, the relevant data also has its "blind spots", such as Lewandowski was briefly injured last season, the score naturally declined, but Alaba helped Bayern win the Bundesliga last season, the Champions League also ranked among the top 8, the two-front battle has only missed three games, this season's transfer to Real Madrid is also gradually exerting strength, La Liga and the Champions League are also scored, these heroes on the edge of the magnesium lamp, definitely deserve more recognition from fans.