Thursday, May 28, 2009

Is There A Problem With Fan Polling When Xavi Hernandez Doesn't Get Votes?



Xavi Hernandez was one of five finalists for FIFA's 2008 World Player of the Year and yesterday was named Man of the Match for his performance in the 2009 Champions League final.

Yesterday he "completed 80 passes and gave the ball away just five times" (Source) and was the player who delivered the cross which Lionel Messi headed into the net for Barca's second goal.

He gets plenty of respect from football insiders but he clearly doesn't have much pull with the fans.

At Bestplayerintheworld.com, Xavi has earned a total of two votes to Messi's 550+ votes so far this year.

Why is this?

How can we get fans to see what football people see?

That Xavi is possibly the best player in the world?

2 comments:

  1. The problem is that fans don't understand how influential a player like Xavi can be over the course of ninety minutes. Iniesta wouldn't look like half the player without Xavi playing alongside him.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's true. Do you then also believe that Xavi wouldn't be half the player without Iniesta? They are both such fantastic footballers. Our poll is really just in its experimental stage and the numbers aren't very big at all but what is the difference between the two such that Iniesta currently has 31 votes and Xavi only 3? Going forward our aim is to develop a fan polling system that is somewhat rigorous. While it might bring into question our entire aim of polling "the fans" I would therefore like to see our vote getters somehow parallel those of the Ballon d'Or and FIFA awards.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for contributing to the Best Player in the World project.