In LatinAmerican Post we review the history of this award, created by the FIFA as opposed to the award established by France Football

The Best award is relatively new, as it was created by FIFA in 2016, to recognize the best player of the season. This prize is the substitute of the FIFA Golden Ball, which had been delivered since 2010 together with France Football, a French magazine that continues to deliver it but now separately.

Leer en español: ¿Sabes cuál es la diferencia entre los premios The Best y el Balón de Oro?

The FIFA Golden Ball award was, in turn, the union between the two most prestigious awards given in the world of football. France Football was the pioneer in delivering it since 1956, while the FIFA world player handed over by the aforementioned body, dates from 1988.

After several disagreements between FIFA and France Football, in 2016 the agreement that united both organizations was broken and France Football magazine re-established the Golden Ball award and FIFA created the "The Best" award.

Maybe you're interested in reading: Cristiano, Modric or Salah, who will win the 2017-2018 UEFA Best Player award?

Different criteria

Although they are the prizes that every footballer wants to win each season, there are different criteria to select the finalists and winner of The Best and the Golden Ball.

For The Best award, only the performance of the season that has just ended is taken IGNORE INTO account. Voting to choose the best FIFA player is shared between the national coaches and their respective captains, specialized journalists and fans through the FIFA website.

On the other hand, the Golden Ball considers the performance of the players not for a season but for a calendar year (or calendar) and the votes correspond only to 193 sports journalists from specialized media, according to Telesur.

In this sense, the FIFA prize seems to have an advantage over the award of the French publication and its predecessor. When both prizes were unified, the winner was decided by the suffrage of national coaches, their captains, and specialized journalists. However, with the inclusion of fans to choose the winner, FIFA, scored a goal in his goal to draw the attention of the football world.

Individual marks or collective titles?

While the FIFA prize is an individual prize, in the two previous editions the winner was the Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo, despite having been behind the Argentine Lionel Messi in individual marks as goals and assists, and despite having won the League and Domestic cup The award privileged the Portuguese, who won that year the Champions League with Real Madrid and the European Championship with his team.

According to information reviewed by the Spanish portal Marca, for this edition, we find surprises in the finalists, because neither Messi, -a fixed star for this kind of awards in the last 12 years and winner of the double with FC Barcelona- , nor Antoine Griezman, one of the big favorites due to his recent title as world champion with France and winner of Europa Legue with Atlético de Madrid, were among the three finalists.

According to the information made public by FIFA, in this edition, the podium is completed by the Portuguese and Champions League winner, Cristiano Ronaldo, his former teammate at Real Madrid and world runner-up Luka Modrić and the runners-up of the Champions League and second in the race for the golden boot, Mohamed Salah.

¡Falta 1 semana!

@Cristiano
@lukamodric10
@MoSalah

¿Quién será elegido #TheBest el 24 de septiembre?#FIFAFootballAwards pic.twitter.com/4Nnr8QlJfU

— FIFA.com en español (@fifacom_es) 17 de septiembre de 2018

The season of Mohamed Salah, was exceptional for the many registered individuals, achieving that in the course of a year, went from being a player with little reputation to be a superstar of world football. The defeat in the final of the Champions League at the hands of their opponents and that at a collective level neither Liverpool nor their national team managed to obtain trophies, they reduce their chances.

Then the real fight would be between Cristiano Ronaldo and Luka Modrić. The first was the big star in achieving the third Champions League for Real Madrid, leaving impressive records in the second half of the season. While the Croatian was a fundamental piece for the title of the meringues but also loaded the Croatian team on shoulders until the final of the Russian World Cup 2018. Today Monday, September 24, we will know the winner and we will know if this time they deprived the titles or individual numbers.

LatinAmerican Post | Daniela Escalante

Translated from '¿Sabes cuál es la diferencia entre los premios The Best y el Balón de Oro?'