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Deco was awesome, one of my favorite Barca players ever. But Iniesta is one of the most talented and elegant midfielders ever to kick a ball. The only midfielders comparable to him in the past decade are Xavi and Zidane. But Deco was a great player, one of the world's best in his prime. We...

Messi has scored 27 goals and assisted 13 in 24 games. He's best scorer in European football so far this season. Cristiano has scored 21 goals and assisted 8 in 21 games. He's the 4th best scorer in European football so far this season.

I hope this is not serious. Coentrão is an extremely overrated player. Benfica made an extraordinary deal and they've been far better off defensively this season without him.

Iniesta Puyol Messi/Sanchez

Looks like for once we agree on something. I love Xavi and Cristiano is a great player, but none of them have any business being there ahead of this little genius, the best big game player in the world. Iniesta's fitness will decide our season for better or for worse.

For the first time in six games, Messi failed to score at the Bernabeu. #decline #sellMessi But he was pretty good as always. Seeing Iniesta today in the second half should make him up his game, seeing that the best player in the world title isn't safe at all :D

:worthy: :worthy: Keep this man fit, and the trophies will come. When he's playing like this in the biggest games, he's better than even Messi imo. What a player :worthy: Iniesta > Madrid.

Thiago was runner up in the Golden Boy award, just behind Mario Goetze. Entirely deserved. Hopefully he'll be the next great Barcelona midfielder.

Lyon. Those cheats shouldn't even be here in the first place, we need to beat them for Cruyff. But of course the random draw will pit Lyon against Apoel, so no can do.

Não te preocupes, o teu inglês é mais do que perceptível :) Bem-vindo e Visca el Barca. E viva o Sporting :D

Actually, Ronaldo > Villa had nothing to do with form and everything to do with the fact that Ronaldo is and has always been a better winger than Villa. Villa is not at his best in a wing-oriented role, while Cristiano thrives there. But I guess his big match record might justify the =. Fair...

A fairer comparison (given each player's actual position on the pitch) would be, trying to take current form into account: Valdés < Casillas - I certainly have serious doubts about this one, but let's give it to Casillas. Abidal = Marcelo - Marcelo is better offensively, Abidal is a rock...

Yeah, but I maintain that those odds aren't very reliable. The top 10 teams there are the highest profile teams from the four current top leagues in the world, which is basically the same as in years past. Normally, that's a somewhat safe move from odds makers, but not always. When not so high...

Odds makers are not very reliable at all, especially when it comes to the Champions League. Only once since 2004 did the odds-on favorite win the CL (Barca last year). United, City and Chelsea were also odds-on favorites to win their groups and look what happened. It looks as if odds makers...

What exactly makes United and Chelsea such difficult draws? A team like Napoli has a lot more potential to cause trouble, on their day they can beat anyone. There's no reason to fear the current Chelsea and United, I'm not even sure they'll seal qualification this week.

Voting for national teammates is already forbidden. Voting for club teammates should also be forbidden, that's the one improvement that could be made imo. Voting for your friends? How could a rule like that possibly be applied? If you can suggest a fairer method to determine the player of the...

No. You're right. I'm not saying the current method is perfect, but it's as close as it gets imo because it gives representatives of every nation a say. I don't think there's any way to eliminate the inevitable bias of a voted award.

Journalists are biased too, they just have a different kind of bias. Humans are biased by nature and will vote for who they prefer. I don't think it is ever possible that one of these votes is completely unbiased. But unless some infallible statistical method to determine who the best player is...

I'm confused now, where did I ever claim Messi had stolen anything from anyone? Are you sure that was meant at me? Also, Xavi didn't have a poor World Cup... It's good the award are merged because they're essentially the same thing. One is voted by journalists, the others by players/captains...

There's no criteria whatsoever. It's people like you or me (only more involved with football) voting for who they think is the best. It's as if we started a poll in this forum, only instead of having only Barca fans voting, you have coaches/players/journalists from all over the world.