Is The Tag 'Best' Footballer Just About Numbers?

Manuel Neuer must have squirmed in his seat each time the early awards went Germany's way - best woman player, best women's coach and best men's coach. Knowing his reputation as the game's top sweeper-goalkeeper, a unique, innovative position he's helped co-invent, the German was seeing it earlier than most: that the probability of his becoming the world's best player was receding with each announcement.

Did he then later knock back shot after shot of the hard, bitter stuff with last year's loser Franck Ribery conspiratorially pushing one too many in his direction? Ribery, Neuer's Bayern Munich teammate, has been insistent that politics continues to decide the sport's top awards. And while this time the choice should have been a no-brainer, the classy Neuer wouldn't have really minded.

In a World Cup year, for someone who was famously caricatured as lost inside Portugal teammate Raul Meireles's elaborate beard even as the sport's Mardi Gras raged on nearby, to be voted the world's best player can be seen as strange, but knowing how these things turn out, not too surprising really.

This is not about whether Cristiano Ronaldo deserves the accolade or not. With a thumping 54 goals in 43 games in 2014, leading Real Madrid to the Decima -the record 10th European title for the Spanish club - you could argue that there was Ronal do written all over top-flight club football this year. It showed when Ronaldo polled a massive 37.66% of the votes from all national team captains, the coaches and select journalists.

How could such an overwhelming majority be wrong?

But how do you reason these things anyway? Do numbers outweigh the overall achievement, does the collective matter at all? You must remember that Ronaldo's last burst of heroics for Portugal, that fantastic hat-trick against Zlatan Ibrahimovic's Sweden which gave his country the late ticket to Brazil, came as way back as November 2013.

And for most part of 2013-14 -the 93rd minute of the Champions League final to be exact the season in Europe and Spain had actually belonged to modest Atletico Madrid but who would remember that now?

With his undisputed impact player status today, Ronaldo looks set to rule such sweepstakes each time football is crunched into number terms. Neuer will never have that luxury.