Modric 1st to halt Messi-CR7 dominance
Luka Modric broke a decade of award dominance by Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi after being crowned world footballer of the year by FIFA yesterday.
Marta won the women’s award for a sixth time.
Modric was voted FIFA’s best player in the 2017-18 season after winning the Champions League for a fourth time in five seasons with Real Madrid and leading Croatia to its first World Cup final where it lost to France.
Messi and Ronaldo were the only winners of world soccer’s main individual award from FIFA in various guises since 2008, both winning five titles each.
Messi didn’t make the threeman shortlist and skipped the trip to London. And as a new dawn in FIFA’s awards history broke inside London’s Royal Festival Hall, Ronaldo also didn’t turn up at the ceremony to be dethroned in person by his former Real Madrid teammate despite being in the final three alongside Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah.
At 5-foot-8, Modric was doubted early in his career because of his height.
“These things were not a burden, they only further motivated me,” Modric said at the World Cup. “You don’t have to be a strapping lad to play football.”
The cloud over the 33-year-old playmaker is that he was charged with perjury in March in an investigation linked to his transfer to Tottenham from Dinamo Zagreb in 2008. Prosecutors claimed Modric gave a false court statement last year about his financial deals with a former Zagreb director . ...
A newly published legal document says FIFA spent $11.7 million in less than three years on private jets, including luxury sight-seeing trips for a top official. The Court of Arbitration for Sport has published a panel’s verdict explaining why it dismissed Jerome Valcke’s appeal against a 10-year ban . . . .
The Spanish players’ association remains against the league’s plan to play a regular-season match in the United States despite receiving more detailed information. The association was not convinced by the league’s update and said it still disapproved of the Girona-Barcelona game planned for suburban Miami in January.