Modric, Marta win Best FIFA player 2018 awards
LONDON, (Reuters) - Real Madrid’s Croatia midfielder Luka Modric was named Best FIFA Men’s Player of the Year for 2018, while Orlando Pride’s Brazil forward Marta won the women’s award at a ceremony yesterday.
Modric won the Champions League with Real and then played a major role in Croatia’s run to the World Cup final where they were beaten by France.
“This award is not just mine. It is my team mates’ from Real Madrid and Croatia. Without my coaches, I would not have won this and without my family I would not be the player I am today,” said 33-year-old Modric.
It is the first time since Brazilian Kaka’s triumph in 2007 that the men’s prize was not won by either Cristiano Ronaldo or Barcelona’s Argentina forward Lionel Messi — neither of whom attended the ceremony at London’s Royal Festival Hall.
Portugal international Ronaldo, who joined Juventus from Real Madrid in the close season, was second in this year’s awards with Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah in third place.
The 32-year-old Marta, whose Orlando Pride team reached the the U.S. National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) playoff semi-finals, had won the previous FIFA Women’s Player of the Year award five times, most recently in 2010.
The Brazilian, who led her country to the Copa America title in April, beat Olympique Lyonnais pair Ada Hegerberg of Norway and Dzsenifer Marozsan of Germany to the award.
France’s World Cup-winning manager Didier Deschamps took the Men’s Coach of the Year award, with compatriot Reynald Pedros claiming the women’s award after winning the Champions League with Lyon.
Voting for the player and coach categories was conducted by national team captains and managers, selected journalists and, for the first time, an online poll of fans.
Real Madrid’s Belgium international Thibaut Courtois won the Goalkeeper of the Year Award.
Salah’s goal for Liverpool against Merseyside rivals Everton in the Premier League won the Goal of the Year, which is voted for by fans, ahead of Gareth Bale’s spectacular overhead kick for Real Madrid in the Champions League final.
Peru’s supporters won the FIFA Fan Award and German Lennart Thy, who plays for Turkish club BB Erzurumspor, won the FIFA Fair Play Award after donating stem cells to help a leukemia patient. Following their silver medal finish last night at the 60 th annual senior Caribbean TT championships in Jamaica, national coach Idi Lewis said last evening he was not surprised that both the Guyana men and women’s team reached the finals of the team events.
Though they were beaten at the final hurdle, Lewis described the achievement as “awesome” adding that the goal was always to medal at these championships which serves as a qualification tournament for next year’s Pan Am Games.
Both teams lost o teams from the Dominican Republic with the women losing 0-3 and the men…
“At the beginning of the year our mission was to do well at the Caribbean championships and part of our plan was to use the Commonwealth and CAC games as some of the building blocks to achieve that goal,” Lewis told Stabroek Sport in an invited comment last night.
Lewis who was the coach at the Commonwealth Games said that he was proud of the teams’ result especially since the two teams were without a coach at the championships.
“I’m very happy and proud that our players stuck to the plan and programme despite the many challenges we would have faced and it was amazing to see both our men and women’s team in the final playing for gold last night.”
Lewis showered praise on GTTA president Godfrey Munroe who personally supervised the coaching of the team following the departure of former Caribbean men’s singles champion Sydney Christophe who was here in August.
“Special thanks to president Godfrey Munroe and the GTTA executive, corporate Guyana for assisting with sponsorship, the government of Guyana, Dr Arron Fraser, the Guyana Olympic Association, former national player Diane Chance, GTTA secretary and coach Linden Johnson and all the others whose efforts assisted in the teams producing their best result for some time,” Lewis ended.