I AM the Football Star

The threshold of seniority here isn’t as severe as with the Golden Ball Award.

However... not everyone is satisfied with the World Footballer of the Year either.

Because this award actually puts more weight on a player’s global fame.

Lu Yang’s rapid surge in the rankings, part of it is his achievements, but his massive popularity, traffic and controversy are probably the real key.

It’s even possible that Sofia helped bump Lu Yang up by three to five places in there.

The clearest reflection of this is in the rankings of the players at the top.

Gutierrez, whose global popularity isn’t that high, only sits ninth in the World Footballer of the Year.

Compared to his performance over the whole of last year, this ranking is a bit low.

Barça’s Mateo is still in tenth place, which is obviously too high.

Whether it’s in the Golden Ball Award or the World Footballer of the Year, his ranking is inflated, and that has a lot to do with Barça’s full backing.

Spain’s striker Domenguez, relying on a pretty face, has tons of fans worldwide, so although he’s only twelfth in the Golden Ball Award, he can climb to eighth in the World Footballer of the Year.

Whereas Robben, who even had a thirty-percent chance of taking the Golden Ball Award over there, only ranks seventh in the World Footballer of the Year here.

That’s nothing short of sigh‑inducing.

The backlash from Robben’s "not fighting, not scrambling" stance in the Golden Ball Award has already started to show.

When Heaven offers you something and you don’t take it, you’ll suffer the consequences!

Everyone already knows you, Robben, are easy to push around; if they don’t push you around, wouldn’t that almost be unreasonable?

Anyway, you yourself, your fans, and the club behind you aren’t going to go as rabid as Lu Yang’s camp in stirring up trouble, so they can only sacrifice you to reduce the conflicts and disputes others might cause.

The World Footballer of the Year isn’t more fair than the Golden Ball Award, because absolute fairness doesn’t exist in the first place.

But they’re smarter than the Golden Ball Award.

They know who they can screw over and who they can’t.

They also know what the fans want to see, so they’re not going to force Robben onto the throne.

A player of Robben’s level not winning the Golden Ball Award, one reason is his own lack of fight.

Another reason is the inaction of the forces behind him.

And a third reason is actually the choice of the broad fanbase.

He... just can’t draw the widespread attention and love of the fans.

Borrowing a phrase from the entertainment industry, he’s a good actor, but it’s hard for him to become a national‑level star.

It’s related to his skill, looks, personality, and works, but not entirely decided by them.

This thing... is basically metaphysics.

Robben is fated never to win the Golden Ball or the World Footballer of the Year!

Unless he has the determination, effort, and luck to defy the heavens and change his fate, otherwise...

And if he wants to defy the heavens and change his fate, the first thing he has to do is leave the Bundesliga, leave Bayern.

Sixth place in the World Footballer of the Year is a bit surprising, yet not that surprising.

Looking at fan comments to decide the order, the World Footballer of the Year gave sixth place to the Alien, Lima.

Over the past year, Lima did win the Copa America as well.

But aside from that, Lima didn’t collect much, and there were even a few months where he was just lying around injured.

Because of the repeated injuries, quite a few fans have shifted from being awestruck by Lima to starting to complain a bit.

The World Footballer of the Year caught onto this, knowing that the ranking they gave wouldn’t stir up much controversy, and would instead garner strong support from a portion of the fans.

Facts proved they gambled right.

Lima, third in the Golden Ball Award, only took sixth in the World Footballer of the Year, yet public opinion shows very few voices feeling he’s been hard done by.

Some people even used this to attack the Golden Ball Award, saying the Golden Ball judges must be blind Jaguars.

The World Footballer of the Year couldn’t be more delighted.

They swear that those people cursing the Golden Ball Award definitely aren’t trolls they spent over three hundred thousand euros on, hiring four PR firms and mobilizing seventeen PR teams to whip up, absolutely not.

The biggest gripe against this year’s Golden Ball Award actually isn’t Robben losing to Izalelt.

Izalelt is the general trend, the correct answer.

The biggest gripe against the Golden Ball Award this year is that it devalued the European Cup way too much.

They even dragged the Copa America out and put it on the same level as the European Cup.

This sparked enormous dissatisfaction among fans worldwide.

In past football award evaluations, it was always: if there’s a World Cup, you look at the World Cup; no World Cup, you look at the European Cup; if neither of the two big tournaments is there, then you look at the Champions League.

See? The Copa America isn’t in the picture at all.

Likewise, neither the Africa Cup nor the Asian Cup enters the picture.

Put like that, the concept becomes clear.

The European Cup is a tournament that can stand shoulder to shoulder with the World Cup, while the Copa America... is a tournament that stands shoulder to shoulder with the Asian Cup.

Can an Asian Cup MVP go and compete for the Golden Ball Award?

Absolutely impossible!

Getting you into the thirty‑man shortlist is already pretty generous.

So this year, in order to prop up certain players their sugar daddies wanted to prop up, the Golden Ball Award massively bumped up the value of the Copa America and simultaneously dragged down the value of the European Cup.

The beneficiaries include Izalelt, Lima, Moreira, Mateo and a whole series of players.

While the victims are the stars of France and Italy.

Lu Yang was evaluated based on the traditional "Copa America‑level" weighting, so he ended up only thirtieth.

But the World Footballer of the Year, still in a stage of striving to improve itself, judged things much more normally, so for them, the Copa America carries little weight.

Thus, fifth in the World Footballer of the Year rankings turns out to be Italy’s number one striker, Ancelotti!

And fourth is none other than the AC Milan Team’s Team Spirit, Italy’s super defender, Praxedes!