The Golden Globe Awards ceremony ended successfully in Paris, France on October 18, Taiwan time.
Real Madrid soccer team
在
European crown
Karim Benzema, the man who pulled off many surprises and led his team to a miraculous win, was the surprise winner of the Player of the Year award. Meanwhile, the
Tottenham Hotspur (city in Morocco)
South Korea's Son Heung-sun also finished 11th, the highest ranking for an Asian player in the Ballon d'Or in years.
Since France Football magazine established the Ballon d'Or in 1956, the annual award has almost always been won by players from Europe and South America; outside of these two continents, African players have gradually received a smattering of votes since the 1990s, but to date, only George Weah, a striker from Liberia, has ever won the trophy (and his influence on the country was so great that he was elected President of Liberia upon his retirement). (his impact on the country was so great that he was elected President of Liberia after his retirement).
As for Asia, there are no Ballon d'Or winners yet. For this soccer desert that Europeans and Americans perceive as a desert, being a finalist would be the greatest recognition. So let's relax the criteria a little bit. How many Asian players have won at least one Ballon d'Or vote in the more than a decade since the Ballon d'Or was established?
The answer is two. Aside from Son Heung-min, who has been nominated twice (22nd in 2019 and 11th in 2022), the other player is a virtual unknown in the star-studded list of Golden Ball winners - a name that may be unfamiliar to even the most seasoned fan.
Not Ali Daei, the former international goalscorer who was inducted into the Asian Football Hall of Fame; not Hong Myung-bo, who won the Bronze Boot at the 2002 World Cup and led South Korea to a record-breaking run to the top of the table; not Shunsuke Nakamura, who was once recognized as Scotland's Player of the Year; not the first player ever to be in
European crown
The Asian player Park Ji-Sung, who played in the final, is also not in the luxury
AC Milan (football club)
Took over from Keisuke Honda, who was back number 10.
Apart from Son Heung-min, the only other Asian player who has ever received a Ballon d'Or vote is Younis Mahmoud from Iraq.
There's no excuse if the name doesn't ring a bell with you at all, and neither did most European and American fans who didn't follow Asian soccer in 2007, the year he was shortlisted for the Ballon d'Or. The reason for this is simply because he has not played in Europe for his entire career.
Soccer has always been the most popular sport in Iraq, but like the rest of its neighbors who consider it the national sport, Iraq
the national team
The performance of Iraq is not too good - in regional tournaments such as the Arabian Cup (four titles in six appearances), they can get good results, but out of the Middle East, Iraq is not really a strong team. They made it to the 1986 World Cup, but lost three consecutive matches, and only made it to the quarterfinals of the Asian Cup in 1976, and the rest of the years they only made it to the last eight at most.
It was not until the golden generation, led by Mahmoud, that Iraqi soccer regained the style it had briefly enjoyed in the past. His legend began in March 2002, when Mahmoud, who had just been promoted to the adult team, scored the only goal of the match in an unofficial friendly against Cagliari in the second division.
In the same year's West Asian Football Championship, Mahmoud, who was not yet 20 years old at the time, replaced Ahmad Abdul Jabar late in the second half of the 1-2 final against Jordan, and just as Iraq were about to go down by a goal, Mahmoud became the hero of the team - scoring the equalizer in the 89th minute to send the game into an extended match. A golden goal by defender Haidar Mahmoud at the end of the first half of the extended match gave Iraq the trophy.
