All the drama and anticipation of the FIFA Ballon d’Or gala is finally over. Despite the ridiculous shunning of Christine Sinclair from an award that was arguably hers, a still deserving candidate was selected today in Abby Wambach. Now all that Wambach is missing from her trophy case is a WWC title. Wambach will have the opportunity for an amazing narrative heading into Canada in 2015. Should the USWNT add another star to the jersey in Canada, Wambach could end her career having done it all, just as her mentor, Mia Hamm, did with her career.
An Elite Club: Wambach is only the second American to win the award, and is the first non-consecutive winner.
The final standings for the women’s Ballon d’Or were: 1. Abby Wambach (USA) 2. Marta (BRA) 3. Alex Morgan (USA) 4. Homare Sawa (JPN) 5. Christine Sinclair (CAN) 6. Carli Lloyd (USA) 7. Camille Abily (FRA) 8. Aya Miyama (JPN) 9. Miho Fukumoto (JPN) 10. Megan Rapinoe (USA)
Of course, to win the award Wambach had to receive the highest percent of total votes. Votes come from three main groups: national team captains, national team coaches, and media members. Each country with a FIFA team gets one vote per group. An interesting note is that many of these teams know little of the players they are voting for, except for name recognition. This leads to an astonishing breakdown* of votes within the groups and overall.
Captains’ Votes:
Abby Wambach lead the captain’s votes, as well as all other groups, with a total of 5.68 percent. Second place here went to Marta. This may seem surprising as Alex Morgan was considered the favorite to win the award. Even more surprising is that Morgan didn’t even finish third in the Captains votes. That place went to last year’s winner Homare Sawa.
To explain this its important to look at the countries Marta and Sawa are receiving votes from. Among others, Marta recieved votes from Albania, Comoros, Suriname, and Tajikistan. Sawa recieved votes from countries such as Vanuatu, Kyrgyzstan, and Mauritius. To say that those votes were not recieved simply because of name recognition, or in the case of Sawa, carry over from the last year, would be insane.
Also interesting are the ballots of each candidates’ home country captain. US captain Christie Rampone voted Alex Morgan number one, and filled out the rest of her ballot with US team members Abby Wambach and Megan Rapinoe. Japan captain and candidate Aya Miyama did the same, voting for team members Homare Sawa and Miho Fukumoto. In the case of Christine Sinclair and Marta, they were both their country’s captain and lone candidate, neither one voted for their self.
Coaches’ Votes:
When comparing the coaches’ votes to the captains’ votes I expected to find a decent amount of continuity in vote percentages. However, while 1st, 2nd, and 3rd were the same combination of Wambach, Marta, and Sawa, Alex Morgan drops to 5th in the coaches percent totals. 4th astonishingly goes to Japanese goalkeeper Miho Fukumoto, who placed no better than 7th in the other two polls.
Coaches also didn’t vote for their players which was seen in the captain’s polls. With the exception of Canada’s John Herdman and USA’s Jill Ellis, no other coach gave one of their players a first place vote.
Another drop in the coaches polls was Christine Sinclair. While she placed 5th in the captains’ vote, Sinclair fell to 7th in the coaches, the lowest she placed in any of the polls.
Media Votes:
The media poll is where thing really get interesting. Abby Wambach totaled her highest vote percentage in this category with 8.06 percent, but the second place finished in the group was not Marta or Sawa. Second place went to the USA’s Carli Lloyd, who had 4.63 percent of the votes. Alex Morgan and Christine Sinclair tied for 3rd in the group with 4.17 percent.
Looking at all the vote totals it seems that there is really no consistency within the countries when it comes to their votes, or even consistency within the groups themselves. This relates back to the issue of name recognition. I question whether Christine Sinclair would have won even if FIFA hadn’t snuffed her out of a chance.
Overall, the Ballon d’Or went to a more than deserving candidate. However, I do hope that in the future, voters for the award are more knowledgable of the candidates. I’m not sure this job falls to FIFA, but rather to the voters themselves. I think the issue of basing the vote off of name recognition has contributed to the repetitive nature of the award. As I stated earlier, this year marks the first time there has not been a repeat winner of the women’s Ballon d’Or. Perhaps Wambach can put up another impressive performance and get the streak back on track, but until then there is lots of soccer to be played.
*Vote percentage breakdown can be found here: http://www.fifa.com/ballondor/live/index.html?intcmp=newsreader_news_box_1
RachaelFC 