World Player Of The Year Decided in Zurich Ceremony

World Player Of The Year Decided in Zurich Ceremony

The greatest solo award a player can receive was decided in Zurich this past Monday. From hundreds of talented Media-Whores and Cocaine Enthusiasts, only Three were in with a chance of being recognised as the best football player on the planet. Here is a rundown of the participants, and the amazing achievements that brought them to Zurich. 

 In Third Place

LIONEL MESSI

The Barcelona Hitman and former 4 time winner of the award could only muster 3rd place this time around. Messi has missed a number of games due to injury this year, but still has the most obnoxious statistics you will ever see. Scoring 54 Goals in his last 44 La Liga appearances. Messi is known for his close ball control and explosive dribbling from deep positions, along with his dead eyed finishing. The little Argentinian may well be the best of our generation, but this time around, there were two better.

 In Second Place

CRISTIANO RONALDO

The man that has placed 2nd four times already, had to settle for a fifth silver medal. Ronaldo's statistics are unbelievable. Scoring 54 in his last 52 La Liga games, and dragging Portugal to the World Cup finals with a stunning Hat Trick against Sweden in the playoffs. A much different player to Messi, Ronaldo marries ability on the ball with pure physicality. He is as strong as an Ox, with the speed of a gazelle. Don't think this is the only part of his game though, whether he is 30 yards out or 3 yards out, Ronaldo has proven he is one of the deadliest finishers ever to play the game.

Many thought it would be his year, but one man managed to surpassed him.............

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First Place

ROBERT CHARLES 'ROB' OGLEBY

 

Rob Ogleby has been a phenomenon this season. Turning in unbelievable performances at the highest level, on a consistent basis.

Ogleby started the year in somewhat controversial circumstances. Playing for Hearts, he and team mate Ian Black were charged with possession of class A drugs in a nightclub in Edinburgh. Ogleby was adamant he was wrongly accused, stating that Black had 'forced him to do a line so he wasn't wired on his own'. Ogleby beat the charges, put the controversy behind him and started talking with his football. 

Ogleby signed for Skrill Premiership side Wrexham in June on a free transfer after his deal with Hearts expired. Bayern Munich had broken their wage structure to table an offer which would have made him the highest paid player ever, but Ogleby decided he wanted his legacy to revolve around his 'football' and wasn't interested in the money these new 'Oil Rich' clubs could offer to try and raise their appeal.

Ogleby made an instant impact on the highest stage, with a Thunderous effort against Aberystwyth in a pre-season friendly sparking a pitch invasion at the Race Course Ground.

Ogleby continued his fine form in the Skrill Premier, with his sensational chipped finish against Woking being the first league goal of Wrexham's season. 

He picked up his first major honour in March 2013 when Wrexham picked up the FA Trophy at Wembley.

But the moment that the world stood up and took notice of Ogleby, was surely Wrexham's Skrill premier 2-1 win over Welling United. Ogleby coming on as a sub in the 82nd Minute with the game poised at 1-1. He showed immense composure and ability to divert a Brett Ormerod corner inside the near post with his shin, his first touch of the game. It was one of those moments that will never be forgotten, Pele labelled it 'The goal that shook North Wales', Sepp Blatter was seen to be weeping in the aftermath, unable to control his emotions after the beauty of what he had just witnessed. 

Ogleby finished the year with 4 goals in 21 appearances, and when he was placed on the shortlist for Zurich, there was simply only going to be one winner. 

Robert Ogleby, the greatest I have seen

Johnson's Saga: Sunderland 4-1 Fulham

Adam Johnson scores hattrick to lift Black Cats off bottom and keep World Cup dream alive.

The brave Adam Johnson entered the cottage, followed keenly by his 10 merry men.  The great wooden doors creaked loudly open as if awoken from an ancient sleep, and they were swallowed by darkness.  They passed through corridors lit by torches that flickered shapes on the paintings that adorned the walls.  Johnson stopped at one of the paintings.  The timeworn canvas was indistinguishable from the wall on which it clung save for the faint outline of a staff-bearing figure hiding beneath the dust.

'What is it?'  Dossena asked.  'Are we going to die?'

'Al Fayed.'  Johnson replied.

They kept walking.  The sound of their studs ruptured the silence.  They walked for what felt like miles following a coldness that danced and licked around them.  

'Can you hear that?'

'I'm scared.'  Wes Brown breathed.

'We're almost there.'  Johnson beamed defiantly.  

'I want to go back.  I'm not brave like you, Alan.'

'It's Adam.'

'I'm no warrior.  I'm no hero.  I'm just an average injury prone defender from Longsight, Manchester.'  He was tugging on the bottom of his shirt nervously.

Johnson smiled and placed his hand on Wes Brown's cheek.  'It's okay.'  Johnson said.  'We're all scared.  But we have travelled too long and too far to give up now.  Do you want the death of Adam Mitchell to be in vain?  For him to have been raped and burned alive by all those dragons for nothing?  

'We are so close, Wes.  We have Lord Mulensteen cowering in his stronghold.  He's afraid.  And he is weak.  We will destroy him and free the people of Fulham from the curse bestowed upon them by the evil sorcorer Al Fayed.  And you shall be a hero.  All of you.'

'Hurrah!'  The men cheered, and they began to run gallantly forward before slowing back down to a walk as they weren't entirely sure why they were running.  A gloomy green eye winked slowly open in front of them.  As they approached it grew wider and brighter, the men squinted as they pushed into the cold.

'This is it,'  Johnson said.  'Our time has come.'

As they entered the pitch a voice boomed from the PA system; the stadium rumbled like the bowels of some primeval beast or lorry.  'You dare enter my fortress?  You dare challenge the great Lord Mulensteen?'

'We're here to end your reign of terror and free the people of Fulham from the evil sorcerer Al Fayed's legacy of truly wrist-siltingly shit football.'  Johnson bellowed.

'You'll never leave here alive.'  

'Yeah!  Alive, alive!'  Mulentseen's frog-like sidekick Ray 'Thesaurus' Wilkins cackled excitedly.

What followed was the stuff of legends.

It was a nervy start for the Black Cats.  Wes Brown, still evidently shook, gifted a chance early on to Mulensteen's dark-eyed lizard warrior Dimitar Berbatov.  But still cursed by the spell of lethargy, Berbatov failed to be arsed to convert.  'That was close,' Johnson said to himself, his suit of armour shimmering as he lent forward to help Brown to his feet. 

Then, Jack Colback made a similar mistake, gifting a chance to Mulensteen's bounty hunter from the planet Kamino, Adel Taarabt.  However, he too was unable to open the scoring.   

Johnson knew he had to act.  He knew the importance of scoring first in the face of a relegation battle.  And in the 29th minute, he charged bravely at the Cottagers' defence before being scythed down by Steve Sidwell.  The crowd gasped.  Lord Mulesnteen let out an evil laugh, as did Ray Wilkins before Mulensteen pulled the choker round his neck.   

'Don't die, Alan,' Wes Brown said looking down at his fallen hero.

'I won't.  It's just my thigh, I think.'  Johnson replied.  He got up, placed the ball on the turf, and cunted it through Stockdale's hands.  

Evidently determined to lead from the front, Johnson ran at the Fulham defence again, and this time he was brought down carelessly by Mulensteen's other ginger player, Riise.  However this time Johnson elected to pull the resulting free kick back to Ki, whose shot was deflected by Mulensteen's brain dead ogre Phllippe Senderos and sailed past Stockdale.  You could say, he was the 'Ki' that unlocked Fulham's defence :)

Lord Mulensteen let out a blood curdling cry and turned to Gus Poyet who literally did not know what the fuck was going on.  Mulensteen, knowing that each Premier League team gets to use their Pokéball once to turn the tide of a match, threw his toward the fourth official, out burst a 16th Century scale model cottage.  Poyet threw his (once challenged, a manager must oblige) from which a black cat lept forth.  The crowd held their breath, even the players stopped, only for the cat to walk inside the cottage and go to sleep.  

But the battle was not over.  Lord Mulensteen's men, enraged by their own shortcomings, rallied forward after the break and won a corner.  Duff whipped it in and Sidwell was able to break free from Marco Alonso and head the ball past Mannone.  The toad-like frame of Wilkins bounced around the technical area excitedly, Fulham were threatening a revival.  Johnson and his men were tiring, nine of whom started in their heroic 2-1 win at Manchester United four days prior.  However, Fulham failed to turn their superior possession into chances.  Seeing an opportunity, Lee Cattermole, who was born a 26 year old defensive midfielder on £10,000 p/w (seriously where did he come from?), won possession from Clint Dempsey.  Sunderland broke from deep, Ki raced forward leaping over mutilated bodies and other effects of war.  Altidore joined the charge.  He returned possession to Ki, who played Johnson in behind the struggling Riise before the winger slid the ball through Stockdale's legs.

Sunderland were sensing victory, the players cheered and rallied around Johnson.  But as Altidore walked towards Johnson triumphantly, Mulensteen threw a sword to the ogre Philippe Senderos who drove it through Altidore's stomach inside the area.  Altidore fell to his knees, Johnson held his weird head.  

'Did I do good, boss?'  Altidore spluttered.  His watery child-like eyes looked up at Johnson.  Wes Brown sobbed in he background.

'Yes, Jozy, you did good.  You did good.'

Altidore smiled.  He pulled Johnson in closer and whispered in his ear, 'Promise me one thing.'      

'Anything,' Johnson replied.

'Promise me you'll go to the World Cup.'

Johnson looked over his shoulder nervously.  'Right quiet now.'

'Get off my eyes I'm not dead yet.'

'Shhh, quiet now.'

'I'm not dead-'

'Rest brave Altidore,' Johnson wrestled Altidore to the ground until he did eventually die.  Wes Brown let out a wail.  

'What did he say to you?'  Larsson asked.

'Nothing.'  Johnson replied, getting his breath back.  'Nothing.'

Johnson walked up to the penalty spot, and hammered home his hat-trick and continued Sunderland's recent winning form.  As he did, the ground began to rumble and the stadium zapped into nothingness, Michael Jackson's statue disintegrated and the FA deleted Fulham's pointless name from their database.  Birds sang and slowly children emerged and trickled into the streets.  'We're free!  Can we support Chelsea now?'

The victory was not only good news for Sunderland fans who saw their side overtake Crystal Palace in their bid to escape from relegation zone, it also gave fresh hope to Johnson's dreams of going to the World Cup in Brazil.

"In the last few weeks and months I felt like the door was almost closed on me but now I think if I keep playing like this you never know, I might make a late shout for the plane."

"Theo is a good friend of mine. I have come through the under-19s and under-21s with him. You never want to see that [injury], I was gutted for him, but if you can gain off someone else's misfortune, you have got to try and take it. But I won't be the only one who is thinking about that. There are probably four or five good wingers who won't make the plane."

There'll also be a few shit ones, Johnson. 

Man United V Spurs - The Desolation Of Moyes

David Moyes has taken a lot of stick so far this season, but it seems a home loss to Spurs is about as bad as it gets for United fans, with forums and message boards demanding he be 'axed', 'stabbed', and in one strange individuals mind 'bricked'.

TO THE GAME - Moyes' first mistake was in his team sheet. He started Rooney who was just back from injury and clearly less fit than usual (which isn't very fit). He would have been better used as an impact sub in the second half, Instead he played the whole match, and even went into midfield later in the game.

United started well, they had lots of the ball in the opening half, but didn't particularly do anything. The first real talking point coming from a long ball over the top. Michael Dawson took 30 seconds to turn around, and then another 30 seconds to start running, by which time Danny Welbeck had stopped chirpsing some gyal dem in the front row and scampered after it. This was also the first time we got to see the quite clearly demented Hugo Lloris do something completely odd. Welbeck got onto the ball, but couldn't quite get enough on it to get passed Dawson (who was being northern right behind him) and out came Lloris with a double fisted forward diving punch for absolutely no reason. He didn't touch the ball, but luckily it was so comical that Welbeck was too busy 'having jokes' to capitalize.

Touching on Lloris, he used to be so calm and collected. Ever since Lukaku blapsed him in the nut with his knee, he hasn't been the same. Its either that, or Gomes and him had a Harry Potter style wand fight at the training ground, Lloris did the cruciatus curse, and now some of Gomes' soul has attached itself to him.  Much like Voldemort's (Jonjo Shelvey's) did in said books/films/every piece of merchandise you can ever imagine (i saw a Harry Potter ice cream maker the other day - i mean, what the fuck? When does Harry Potter eat ice cream? And why would you think to yourself  'yeah i love thinking about Harry Potter whilst i make ice cream'? Just extraordinary)

BACK TO THE GAME - As i mentioned earlier, United had lots of the ball in the first half, but didn't create anything of note. Most of their play came down the right, with the (sometimes really dangerous) Antonio 'T Dog' Valencia. He was making Danny Rose look average (basically making Danny Rose look like Danny Rose) but in terms of final delivery he was pathetic. I believe he crossed the ball 13 times in the first half, and not one was to a United player.

aaaaaaaaaand HERE COME SPURSSSSSSS. Tim Sherwood is a genius, if he isn't the most successful manager of all time within 20 years, i will be gobsmacked (gobsmacked is such a shit word). He made a mistake against West Brom a couple of weeks ago in playing a midfield of Holtby and Eriksen, and has now realised that you need some sort of defensively minded player in there. He went with Capoue and Dembele at Old Trafford, the former doing a decent job of breaking shit up, the latter doing a decent job of just about everything (god i love Dembele). Spurs did well to soak up the pressure, and then hit United on the counter, and could well have been 3-0 up by half time on another day (not another day of the week just on another occasion that they played United - which is a saying that makes no sense)

They had the first clear cut chance of the game from one of these counter attacks. Bobby (yes Bobby) Soldado playing an excellent ball inside Evra (who was absolutely abysmal) to the red hot Aaron Lennon, who side footed it onto the side of the foot of David De Gea, side foot squared you might say (or might not - i don't care im not your dad, say what you want)

Spurs then broke the deadlock (deadlock - another shit one) with an impressive Adebayor header. Say what you want about the guy, but he is pretty much unplayable at the moment. Every single time he got the ball he made something happen, his industry is really impressive. Eriksen floated the ball in from the right and Adebayor floated above Smalling to float the ball into the bottom right corner with a real floaty header.

And then it was Bobby Soldado's turn...............to miss from a yard. Another counter attack sent Lennon down the right, who whipped in a first time cross low and hard to the back post. HERE COMES BOBBY, YES FINALLY A GOAL IN OPEN PL oh he's kneed it over the bar. I like the guy, and i think he's a good player, but when you buy someone for £26 Million to score goals, you would expect said person to be able to score from pretty much under the cross bar.

Half time came and went, BT sport wheeled out that Jake Prat who said a load of stuff that wasn't relevant in the slightest (Pot......Kettle), whilst Daveed Ginola had sex with his chair and Owen Hargreaves spoke in what can only be described as the most irritating accent i have ever heard. On the BT Sport front, if they are going to buy all these games and become a big force in sports broadcasting, they need to get a better co-commentator than Michael Owen, and when i say co-commentator i use the word loosely. A co-commentator usually offers more insight and analysis than 'well you would expect him to score there' Yes we would Michael, do you have any analysis that can maybe offer us an insight into why he missed? Being a striker yourself? Maybe the ball just bouncing before it came to him put him off a bit?.................'i think he should be scoring there' Oh OK thanks Michael, glad we cleared that one up.

The second half was exactly the same as the first. Lots of United pressure, and Spurs counter attacks.

Lets sum up the Penalty appeals all in one go. Welbeck - Dived, Januzaj - Dived, Young - Dived. Good night thanks for coming. People (and David Moyes) think the Young one was a penalty, Chris Waddle thought it was a 'Penulltry' and Michael Owen thought he 'may have had a shout, but also may not have had a shout'. Ashley Young is a diver, of that there is no doubt, and unfortunately for United it means he will never be given a penalty ever again. Lloris had one of his mental episodes and ran out with his arms flailing, but he DIDN'T touch Young, and Young had already crossed it before Lloris had (not contacted) him. If the penalty was given i wouldn't have complained, but it wasn't a penalty, Webb (who is usually a serial homer) made completely the right decision.

Spurs survived the appeals to have another counter attack, and a great counter attack it was. Adebayor picked the ball up, played it wide to Soldado, who played a ball into Lennon's path. Lennon drove into the box and hit a cross onto the despairing leg of Vidic, the ball bobbled up in slow motion and Christian Eriksen nipped in front of Valencia (moved to right back - defends like a winger that's been moved to right back) and nodded past De Gea for a 2-0 lead. Surely this was unassailable now, surely Spurs are comfortable, surely they can relax. Oh look Welbeck has scored directly from kick off. It was an incredibly 'Spursy' thing to happen. Everyone ran 6,000 yards to celebrate, so were knackered by the time the game restarted, the ball went out to Januzaj who played a perfect ball behind the (very impressive) Vlad Chiriches, and Welbeck nipped in with a deft finish.

United were back in it, and i genuinely thought they would go on to win the game. Sherwood made the quite mental decision (not a genius) to bring off Capoue and replace him with the (quite clearly equally as mental) 19 year old Nabil Bentaleb. So off comes the defensive midfielder, and on comes a young attacking midfielder to play next to Dembele who is a young attacking midfielder, whilst Young who is an attacking midfielder was brought on by United.

United then basically hammered Spurs into the ground for the next 20 minutes. Having a plethora of corners and pretty much the entirety of possession. Spurs ended up with just Harry Kane ahead of the ball, and his only contribution was quite hilarious. He was in an offside position, the ball was played forwards to him, he waited until it reached him, before smashing it into row Z (giving away a free kick for offside, but also wasting a bit of time). Genius you might say, the camera then zoomed in only for him to try and spit, catching it on his bottom lip and said spit dripping onto his shirt, comedy gold.

Another piece of comedy gold was Hugo Lloris rushing to the edge of his box to connect with a diving header from a long United ball forward. The reason? No one knows, why he didn't just catch it? No one knows, but do we like to watch it? Yes, Yes we do.

Spurs survived the onslaught for a well earned win, and now find themselves only 2 points behind Liverpool. You would imagine they are back in the race for 4th, whilst Sherwood has them playing some nice stuff at the moment. The future is looking reasonably good for spurs fans right now.

And what of United? Say what you want about Moyes, but he did try everything he could to get back into the game, bringing on Hernandez, Kagawa and Young. However they should have had enough to open up a Spurs team with Michael Dawson at the back. It would seem Moyes is intent on ALL play coming down the sides, even though it was plain to see that a ball over the top or in between centre backs was clearly a better option (Welbeck scoring and going close on both occasions that ball was played). United fans calling for his head have every right to do so, but i feel in this case they will be better off supporting the manager and trying to stomach this 'transition season'

Being a Spurs fan, that is without a doubt the most obnoxious thing I have ever said.