Catching Up: World Player of the Year?

Keßler wins it all.

The last time I wrote on the blog England were about to welcome Germany to the new Wembley for the first women's friendly ever at the prestigious ground, it didn't go quite as planned for the English -Germany won 3-0- but it did indeed mark a cornerstone and landmark on how far the English had come in terms of Women's Football.
Fast-forward to now, we, as in the entire Women's Football world, have come so far, The Netherlands and Ecuador completed the brackets of teams qualified for the World Cup in Canada next year and the group stages were drawn on December 6.
The list for the Best Player in the World was finally narrowed down from ten to three. The list of Nadine Keßler -the 'ß' can be replaced by 'ss' but I just love having it as 'ß'-, Marta and Abby Wambach sparked a bit of controversial responses from social media -as usual- and then there were a number of international games as well as domestic games done.
But that's just covering it vaguely, so here's my take on the last few months about the world of  women's football starting it with the Player of the Year issue for this episode on the blog;

Ballon d'Or
It's just inevitable, isn't it? Everyone does seem to have a better opinion about individual awards than the governing body handing them out, just that this time the majority might be right. FIFA reduced the initial list for the Women's Player of the Year from 10 players -consisting of Sweden's Nilla Fischer and Lotta Schelin, Germany's Nadine Angerer and Nadine Keßler, Japan's Aya Miyama and Nahomi Kawasumi, Spain's Veronica Boquete, Louisa Necib of France, USA's Abby Wambach and Brazil's Marta- to three players.
Germany's Keßler, Brazil's Marta and USA's Wambach were the final three of the entire list and that caused a lot of negative reactions from social media -especially on social media-.

Keßler's nomination was considered valid despite being injured the German was already voted the European Player of the Year due to winning the UWCL and putting an exemplary performance in all the games for Wolfsburg. Keßler was also part of the German team that won the Algarve Cup being a standout performer especially in the final against Japan, she scored one of the three goals in that 3-0 trashing of the World Champions. Asides from winning Europe's greatest prize, Keßler also captained Wolfsburg to lifting Germany's greatest, the domestic league title.

Marta received a few negative responses to her nomination which has now become a constant thing among women's football fans. I felt she totally deserved it, but the critics might have a point. Marta did put an exceptional performance in the UWCL final against Keßler's Wolfsburg but it wasn't enough to win it for her club Tyresö FF. Tyresö were also disbanded as a club and she then joined FC Rosengård and won the Swedish Championship with them, scoring in the title deciding game as well. Some would argue others outperformed her in Rosengård like Anja Mittag and Ramona Bachmann but plain and simple that UWCL performance got her the nomination, that and the fact that she is still the most talented player in the game -In the Men's game I guess that's like having a Ballon d'Oro top three without Messi or Ronaldo in it-.

However the nominee with the 'more than usual' criticism was and is Abby Wambach. The big American forward had quite a couple of injuries this year and basically did little for club or country until the final of the CONCACAF Cup when she scored four goals against Costa Rica.
Question is, is a one time performance against the 40th ranked team in the World, Costa Rica a criteria for her to be in third ahead of the likes of Nilla Fischer, Veronica Boquete, Louisa Necib and others?

Final Opinion
Lastly I feel there's too many players in the game who do -or did- a lot last season/this year and were worthy of some honors and I think FIFA should start thinking of making a FIFPRO World XI for the Women's game, again this is my opinion but I think most fans would agree. Another issue is the knowledge of the voters, are they voting for popularity or do they actually watch the games? I guess we would never know.

Verdict
I won't even waste a paragraph on this, Nadine Keßler wins this by a landslide ahead of Marta and Abby Wambach anything else could mean it's comedy central at the FIFA office.