Fabio Cannavaro
— Appearances: 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010 Matches: 18; Goals: 0
To this day, Fabio Cannavaro remains the only defender to have won the FIFA World Player of the Year award. That was in huge part because of the Italian’s outstanding performance in the Azzurri’s victorious World Cup campaign in Germany in 2006. The effort also won him the Ballon d’or, the annual award then given to the best player in Europe (and now open to players from around the world), in 2006.
“It is unusual for a defender to be sitting alongside Ronaldinho and Zinedine Zidane, who do marvellous things all season, so I saw it as a victory just to be here,” he said at the award ceremony. In fact, his assessment wasn’t off the mark. Cannavaro was probably dwarfed by every central defender in the world then; he wasn’t well built at 5 feet 9 inches, yet was very rarely beaten in the air.
Such was his leaping ability that it seemed that he could hang eternally in the air. He was also known for his flying forward scissor-kicks while clearing the ball, and his reading of the game was as Italian as it could get.
For four weeks in Germany, what one saw was arguably the greatest series of performances by a defender in a World Cup. In the absence of the legendary Alessandro Nesta, Cannavaro was the only permanent member of an ever-changing defence. In seven games (690 minutes on the field), he led a virtually impenetrable backline that conceded just twice, his performance even earning him the nickname ‘Il Muro di Berlino’ (The Berlin Wall).
That two of his best performances came in a dramatic semifinal against host Germany, which Italy won 2-0 in extra-time, and the penalty shoot-out win over France in the final was testament to his personality. Incidentally, the final was his 100th cap for Italy.