Six Barcelona stars competing for UEFA's team of the year
The Catalan Giants have six players named in the list of 60 players that are going to be competing each other for the uefa.com team of the year. The team is decided after public voting and Carles Puyol, Gerard Pique, Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta, Lionel
Messi and David Villa are all included in the list of 60 players who are featured in different positions.
The rules are simple, each and every person who is going to vote for his/her favourite player is going to select a player out of five options on one particular position. Each and every position has five options making it 11 in the team and 1 for the coach.
Half a dozen Barcelona stars were selected for this honourable “team of the year” and just in case all the Blaugrana wearing players win over public votes, they are going to make more than half of the team. The 60 man list was selected by European football’s
governing body and the votes can be given on the following link:
http://en.uefa.com/community/teamoftheyear/index.html
All the players that were selected were chosen by uefa.com’s team of journalists. The journalists are not considered to be “ordinary” analysts in fact only a group of them who write on daily bases were tied up in a group to select the final 60 for the uefa.com
team of the year.
Barcelona’s six players are very well distributed in the team. With a traditional 4-4-2 being the formation of the team, Gerard Pique and Carles Puyol have both been selected for the centre back positions – meaning 5 men are competing for two slots in the
team. Xavi Hernandez is the only Barcelona star competing for the centre midfield position while Andres Iniesta is competing for the left midfield position. The position of two strikers are also to be competed amongst five players and two Barcelona stars,
Lionel Messi and David Villa are going to be competing each other along with three more strikers.
If all 60 nominees are to be considered, the Spanish goalkeeper Iker Casillas, the Brazilian number 1 Julio Cesar, the Atletico Madrid youngster David De Gea, the Dutch number 1 Martin Stekelenburg and the Portuguese goal stopper Eduardo are all going to
be competing for the position of the goalkeeper.
The Inter Milan and Brazilian full back Maicon, the Real Madrid man Sergio Ramos, the German full back Phillipe Lahm, the Chelsea full back Ivanovic and the Ajax star Van der Wiel are going to be competing for the right back position.
Carles Puyol and Gerard Pique are going to be in competition with Lucio, Walter Samuel and David Luiz as any of the two can fit in as centre backs for the team. Only 5 men are competing for 2 positions in the team and it is definitely going to be easy for
the two Barcelona and Spain defenders to win it because they have been in extraordinary form in not only Barcelona but also Spain.
Coentrao, Van Bronckhorst, Ashley Cole, Riise and Marcos Bastos are going to be competing for the left back position. One of the positions that the Catalan Giants are not competing in are the “full back” and goalkeeping positions. However, there is definitely
a tough competition between the high flying Chelsea star Ashley Cole and the Dutch sensation Van Bronckhorst.
The Barcelona midfield sensation and the Ballon d’Or finalist, Xavi Hernandez is going to be facing tough competition in the centre of the pitch. The German star Bastian Schweinsteiger, Sami Khedira, Esteban Cambiasso and Van Bommel are going to be competing
with the midfield maestro; however, Xavi is considered to be the favourite to win it from them.
Javier Zanetti, Arjen Robben, Cristiano Ronaldo, Dirk Kuyt and Adam Johnson are going to compete each other in the “right midfield” position. As the formation is supposed to be “4-4-2” so there are no wingers and Lionel Messi is considered to be a striker
while Cristiano Ronaldo is taken as a midfielder. On the left flank, Andres Iniesta is competing against the Chelsea man Flourent Malouda, the Tottenham Hotspurs sensation Gareth Bale and the newly signed Real Madrid winger Angel Di Maria.
In the attacking midfield position there are no Barcelona players as Wesley Sneijder, Mesut Ozil, Cesc Fabregas and Thomas Mueller are going to face each other and a public vote will decide whether who gets the spot in the uefa.com team.
Up front, David Villa, Lionel Messi are competing against good goal scorers. The FIFA World Cup 2010’s golden ball winner Diego Forlan is also competing along with Diego Milito, Didier Drogba, Luis Suarez, Gonzalo Higuain, Samuel Eto’o and Carlos Tevez.
The results are going to be announced on 19th of January 2011, soon after the FIFA Ballon d’Or takes place.
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