UEFA Men's & Women's Player of the Year Award Shortlist Revealed

The UEFA Men's and Women's Player of the Year nominees have been announced, with the winners set to be named on 1 October during the 2020/21 Champions League draw ceremony.

The award is based on a player's performance at domestic and international level across an entire season (2019/20). Players' displays for club and country have also been taken into account. After the votes had been counted, a shortlist of three has now been revealed by UEFA.

Manchester City's Kevin De Bruyne and Bayern Munich duo Robert Lewandowski and Manuel Neuer are the three in contention of winning the men's award, while Lucy Bronze (now with Manchester City), Pernille Harder (now with Chelsea) and Wendie Renard (Lyon) make up the shortlist for the women's award.

With regards to the men's award, Lewandowski will be considered the favourite after a simply outstanding 2019/20 season. The striker finished the campaign with 55 goals and ten assists to his name in just 47 appearances. This also includes 15 goals in ten Champions League games to help Bayern become champions of Europe.

De Bruyne, meanwhile, also enjoyed a very successful season last term, managing 23 assists as well as 16 goals in 48 appearances for Man City. The Belgium international was in scintillating form, but despite this, he was unable to prevent his side from crashing out at the quarter-finals stage of the Champions League to Lyon.

As for Neuer, he missed just one game in all competitions last term for Bayern, and managed to keep 22 clean sheets in his 51 appearances. Six of these clean sheets came in the Champions League.

This means that for the first time since 2010, neither Lionel Messi nor Cristiano Ronaldo will be finalists for the award as the former finished fourth in the voting and the latter came in at tenth. Neymar, Thomas Muller, Kylian Mbappe, Thiago Alcantara, and Joshua Kimmich make up the rest of the top ten.

As for the women's award, Bronze will be hoping to come out on top for the second year in a row after helping Lyon to the Champions League title once again before returning to Man City.

But she will face competition for the award from 2017/18 winner Harder - who finished as the second top goalscorer in the Champions League last term for Wolfsburg, with her goals helping them to the final of the competition. This also includes four in the quarter-finals against Glasgow City.

Renard was once again as consistent as ever for Lyon and even finished the 2019/20 campaign with five goals to her name in the Champions League. The leader of the team, Renard even stepped up and delivered at the most crucial time in the semi-finals against Paris Saint-Germain - scoring the only goal of the game.

The outstanding Vivianne Miedema just missed out as she came in at fourth, while Ada Hegerberg is another notable omission. Delphine Cascarino, Eugénie Le Sommer, Amel Majri, Marie-Antoinette Katoto and Dzsenifer Marozsán make up the remainder of the top ten.

The winner of both awards will be announced on 1 October during the 2020/21 Champions League draw ceremony.



Source : 90min