Women’s soccer and its popularity awards
On December 5th, France Football presented the 64th annual ceremony of the Ballon D’or, which is supposed to recognize the best footballer in the world for 2019, we all know that this year’s decision was very controversial and, in my opinion, given to the wrong person.
The 21 nominees for this year’s award included Vivianne Miedema, Ellen White, Marta, Sam Kerr, Rose Lavelle, Amandine Henry, Ada Hegerberg and others, the winner was American player Megan Rapinoe, who was also awarded the title of FIFA’s Best Player, second place to Lucy Bronze and third to Alex Morgan.
Before I start stating facts, I’d like to be totally clear that in no way I hate either Rapinoe or Morgan, in fact, Morgan was one of the reasons why I got into Women’s soccer and still is one of my favorite players, but we can’t deny that their performance this year, though it certainly wasn’t bad, wasn’t award deserving. Now going through some statistics, neither Morgan or Rapinoe scored any goals for their club team, and during the World Cup they scored most of their goals against weaker teams or as penalty kicks and both played in only six or less games in the NWSL. However, Rapinoe has not only become internationally famous, or infamous, for her “I’m not going to the f******g White House” quote, but she has also been an important voice on the fight for equal pay, and her popularity definitely counted when it came to choosing her as the Best.
Out of the Top 3, the only player whose position feel correct is Lucy Bronze. Bronze has proven to be essential for her national team, England, and for her club team, Lyon. The most robbed player has to be Vivianne Miedema, who ended up in an unfair 5th place.
The dutch player has in scored six goals out of the eleven her team scored, in total in Arsenal's match against Bristol City, she has eleven goals and seven assists for Arsenal in the 2019-2020 season of the WSL, two goals in the FA WSL Cup and ten in the UWCL. Her National team performances have also been outstanding, having eight goals and one assist in the five matches she played in the UEFA Women’s championship and three goals in the World Cup this summer.
Another player that deserves more recognition from the awards is Sam Kerr. She recently announced that she’ll be a part of Chelsea as of January 2020. During the 2019 NWSL season she scored 19 goals and had 5 assists on her 23 matches with the Chicago Red Stars and also scored 5 goals on her time with Australia in the World cup
Rapinoe’s win was a big disappointment, especially when knowing who should have won instead and why, but it wasn’t a surprise. The official awards shouldn’t be considered a big deal in women’s soccer until they decide to actually give them to who deserve it, not to who’s the big celebrity at the moment. It would be more than fair to give Rapinoe an award for having a big voice like she does, her participation in the community is very important and should be valued, nevertheless the Ballon d’Or and the FIFA Best should go to the best performance on field and shouldn’t be biased by any of the player’s attitude outside of it.
Miedema herself admitted that she doesn’t care for individual awards and rather win as a team so may have been a reason why she didn’t win, but didn’t seem to be bothered by it either. Even if that kept her from winning, it’s fair to say Bronze, Kerr or Amandine Henry, who has also had great performances scoring three goals for Lyon this season and two in the World Cup, were way more deserving that the actual winner.
Honestly, these awards now are seen as jokes to the fans and to the players. Wolfsburg midfielder Ella Masar tweeted “We have come SO far in the women’s game but seriously, when will it stop being a POPULARITY contest?!? 4 men, it’s stats, it’s number for country AND club”, which clearly isn’t the same for women because in one club game, Miedema scored the same amount as Rapinoe did this year. Masar finished her tweet saying “They’re incredible players, absolutely, but the best 4 of the year?! Hmmm”, showing her opinions on the unfairness of the decision.
As long as the media votes for whoever brings in headlines that will get more hits, that being Rapinoe and Morgan, the results will not be awarding the deserving footballers and women’s soccer will continue to be disrespected. We can now hope for improvement in the next year and continue to grow the game so it’s taken more seriously and stop being a popularity joke contest.
Special thanks to @ flemingotobin on Instagram for helping with statistics and opinions!
turnnoffyourmind
janainaart
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
gummygunk
snowghoul
prguitarman
