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In frustration: Team of the Season polls

By on May 26, 2015

You’ve probably done one of those end-of-season voting polls. These days, it’s pretty hard for any self-respecting football follower to avoid the temptation of the “Team of the Year” and “Player of the Year” rituals.

The “Goals of the Season” polls are always good fun; if anything, simply to get a good look back at the best plays of the season. It’s easy enough this year because the winner is obviously Matt Phillips’ long range blast against Crystal Palace. It’s really trivial, especially in a year with such a strike.

But the water gets murkier when you get to player of the season and, in particular, team of the season awards. You tear out your hair — how is it possible to rate Diego Costa, Sergio Aguero, Alexis Sanchez, and Harry Kane alongside each other? All of them excelled in their own environment.

Even more ridiculously, how can one compare Yaya Toure and Kevin Mirallas, as the Premier League’s official polls made possible? They’re entirely different players.  In UEFA’s team of the year, voters had to compare Vincent Kompany with Phillip Lahm and Pablo Zabaleta and pitch Xabi Alonso against Arjen Robben and Yaya Toure.

And, of course, you come out the other side with an oddball team. Who in their right mind would play Nemanja Matic alongside David Silva in a two-banks-of-four 4-4-2? They might individually be the best players but would hardly mesh together into one team. Or on the other hand, one could go the other way and eschew some top players in favor of a best unit in a given team and formation.

Take Chelsea’s backline. Out of John Terry, Gary Cahill, Cesar Azpilicueta, and Branislav Ivanovic, maybe only Ivanovic could break into a world-class eleven this season, yet you’d be very hard-pressed to find a better defensive unit in the Premier League.

And then there are the goalkeepers. It’s easy to distinguish between the good and comparatively average ones — David De Gea vs. Simon Mignolet, for instance — but at the top level, it’s also a matter of playing style that can differentiate the goalkeepers. And it’s not like your chosen team has come out with any distinct style anyway. Could you choose between Thibaut Courtois and Manuel Neuer? If footballers are artists, it’s like comparing Picasso and Rembrandt: completely different specimens.

Mesh Laurent Koscielny, Terry, Christian Eriksen, Nemanja Matic, and Alexis Sanchez into one team and you’ve got no core at all. Don’t pretend you didn’t laugh. In the end, ESPNFC experts came up with a half-baked Chelsea lineup with a few other stars randomly thrown in and Ronald Koeman in charge.  The PFA’s team voted for by Premier League players produced a similar lineup.  Here’s to boycotting team of the year awards.

Photo credit: soccer.ru

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.