The Best Football Players in the Last 10 Years, According to FIFA

In the last ten years, FIFA awarded the best names in the world of men and women’s football.

Best FIFA Men’s Player

• 2019 – Lionel Messi
• 2018 – Luka Modric
• 2017 – Cristiano Ronaldo
• 2016  – Cristiano Ronaldo
• 2015 – Lionel Messi
• 2014 – Cristiano Ronaldo
• 2013 – Cristiano Ronaldo
• 2012 – Lionel Messi
• 2011 – Lionel Messi
• 2010 – Lionel Messi

Messi and Ronaldo dominate FIFA Men’s Player awards.  This should not come as a surprise, though, because these two big names composed one of the greatest rivalries in football history, if not the most prominent rivalry.

Messi has six Ballon d’Or awards while Ronaldo has five; Messi holds the record for the most Ballon d’Ors. Messi also won his first Ballon d’Or when he was only 22 years old as well as the FIFA World Player of the Year in 2009. In 2014, he earned his first Golden Ball.

Ronaldo received his first Ballon d’Or and FIFA World Player of the Year when he was 23 years old.

Last year’s Best Men’s Player awardee, Modric, is a breath of fresh air. Modric played for Dinamo Zagreb, a Croatian football club. Right now, he was with Real Madrid.

Modric won the player of the year award for at least five times. While he won his Golden Foot award in 2019, his 2018 is full of accolades also. Aside from winning Best FIFA’s Men’s Player award, he also earned his first Ballon d’Or.

In addition, Modric was 2018 World Soccer Player of the Year, World’s Best Playmaker (IFFHS), Athlete of the Year (AIPS), and Midfielder of the Year (ESPN). He won the ESPN award for three consecutive years.

Best FIFA Women’s Player 

• 2019 – Megan Rapinoe
• 2018 – Marta 
• 2017 – Lieke Martens
• 2016 – Carli Lloyd
• 2015 – Carli Lloyd
• 2014 – Nadine Keßler
• 2013 – Nadine Angerer
• 2012 – Abby Wambach
• 2011 – Homare Sawa
• 2010 – Marta

The women’s player awards are more heterogeneous than their men’s player awards counterpart. Two names won the award twice in the last ten years, however, and they are Marta and Lloyd.

Known as “Pele in skirts,” Marta holds the record for the most goals scored at World Cup tournaments. FIFA named her as the World Player of the Year from 2006 to 2010. She was also a Golden Ball and Golden Shoe awardee, both of which she received in the same year (2007).

Sports Illustrated her ranked as the #7 in its Top 20 Female Athletes of the Decade (2000-2009). 

Lloyd, on the other hand, won two Olympic gold medals. She was also awarded the FIFA Player of the Year twice, for two consecutive years (2015 and 2016). In 2015, she was the captain of the US soccer team. 

Lloyd was the first woman soccer player to score three goals during the World Cup final, scoring goals in the first 16 minutes of the game. Because of this, she was awarded the Golden Ball.

In 2015, Lloyd was nominated in Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year. She did not win the award, but she won the Women’s Sports Foundation’s Sportswoman of the Year Team Sport award.

In 2016, she was also nominated as the Best Championship Performance from the ESPY award.

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Who do you think will win the 2020 FIFA Best Players Awards? Let us know.