FIFA Ballon d'Or The Results + The Best Striker in Europe revealed!!!

Last night (though 9 days late) bought the metaphorical curtain down on the year 2011 in football, another glitzy star studded gala. Presented by people who really didn't want to be doing it and attended by people who are their to give their footballing egos a boost. With lots of fake smiling and mock gratitude and people making speeches that all said exactly the same thing. But mostly FIFA seems to have done pretty well, yesterday I made my prediction and got quite a good hit rate in terms of who I thought deserved or should have one the award (oh my god I'm turning into Paul the Octopus) I said Messi both deserved and will win the main event, the Ballon d'Or, he is the best player in the world undoubtedly and will almost certainly become the person to win the most Ballon d'Or's ever. For woman's football the Japanese captain over turned the five year dictatorship of the Brazilian Marta, so one of the few I got wrong. I forgot to comment on manager of the year but in both cases the best one was chosen, the japanese ladies manager who took them to world cup glory and pep guardiola who is on course to become possibly the greatest manager ever since taking over he has won 13 out 16 possible trophies, you gotta admit that's a pretty good record. The fact Wayne Rooney didn't win the puskas award surprised me, usually they go for how famous the player is not how good the goal was and Neymar's stunning solo effort was the deserved winner. Though if this had gone in then it should have won. It does prove one thing, there must be someone at FIFA who see the beautiful game as a cheque paid into a bank account in the Seychelles, that there is somebody in that building in Switzerland who actually understands it. The Presidential Award was given to Sir Alex Ferguson, he led Man U to their 19th title, celebrated 25 years at the helm of a single club and turned seventy. The only other award he should win is for International Services to Chewing Gum. And as I predicted the Japanese FA won the Fair Play award (Nemanja Vidic did get in the World XI though). 2012 promises to be an year of great action in the footballing world which in a years time will be rewarded by another shameful party in the centre of world fun, Zurich.

He already has a pair of those...

As you know Messi is the best player on the planet and Ronaldo is biting at his heels, however they are not the most prolific of strikers in Europe this season so far. UEFA rank them for the ESM Golden Boot with a system that is baffling. Players in England, Spain, Italy, Germany & France get their number of goals multiplied by 2 because they are scored in a tougher league. In the sort of mid-difficulty leagues like in Russia they are multiplied by 1.5, In Estonia they aren't multiplied at all and have the lowest average attendance in Europe for a top division (even Andorra's and San Marino's get more people through the gate) with around 850 on average. However this system baffles me, if you play in one of the five top leagues you are undoubtedly better than the thousands of terrible (comparatively) players who fill up leagues like the Estonian one. So scoring for them in the big leagues is undoubtedly the same difficulty as one of the bad players who play in the deemed by UEFA 'developing leagues'. So the currently the best striker in Europe is:

Latvian Aleksandrs Čekulajevs scored 46 goals in the 2011 Estonian League for JK Trans Narva (the rating is only for league goals for all players) the only reason Ronaldo and Messi are even close (Ronaldo needs to score twice more to overtake him) to this tally is because their goals are multiplied by two because the they play in La Liga, but they are the best players in the world. Lets think theoretically here, if they are 10 times better players then Čekulajevs and they play in a league that 10 times better why do their goals count for more. Scoring 46 league goals in a single season is impressive for anyone and to do it without having a stupid multiplyer to do it. Messi or Ronaldo have never scored 46 LEAGUE goals in a season (yet). So the best striker in Europe is Aleksandrs Čekulajevs, when I do my yearly round up in May I'll make sure to forget the multiplier, then we'll see who really is the top scorer in europe, take that Messi and Ronaldo!!!