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The FIFA Football Awards votes shows how popular the Premier League is globally

One of the more enjoyable parts of the FIFA Football Awards, is the release of the votes. As was ...



The FIFA Football Awards votes...
Soccer

The FIFA Football Awards votes shows how popular the Premier League is globally

One of the more enjoyable parts of the FIFA Football Awards, is the release of the votes.

As was the case when the Ballon d'Or was under FIFA's remit, managers, captains and one media representative from each nation is allowed vote for their top-three,

On Monday night, Cristiano Ronaldo was unsurprisingly named The Best FIFA Men's Player, with Lionel Messi coming second and Antione Griezmann.

Republic of Ireland captain Seamus Coleman was voting for the first time. He gave his three votes to Ronaldo, Messi and Luis Suarez. Manager Martin O'Neill went a little left-field, and failed to vote for either Ronaldo or Messi in his top-three. While O'Neill's votes may have seemed unusual, plenty of other votes in ballot were more unusual.

Here is a selection of some of the unusual votes from the ballot.

Alexis Sanchez

A vote for Alexis Sanchez as the World's best player is far from outlandish, but it was not common. Such is the Arsenal player's influence on his national team, Juan Antonio Pizzi, the Chilean coach voted for Sanchez as the World's best player.

What was unusual about Pizzi's vote was that he voted for nobody else. Sanchez must also be very popular in the South Pacific, as the coaches of both Samoa and American Samoa gave him their top vote.

Jamie Vardy

The Leicester striker is a very popular man in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Vardy, who finished in the top-ten in the Ballon d'Or was voted as the World's best player by coach Oliver Smith and captain Billy Forbes.

Vardy received four first-place votes in the ballot. It's worth noting that 50% of those came from the the Turks and Caicos Islands. Vanuatu manager Raymond Nase and Chinese Taipei boss Kazuo Kuroda gave the striker their number-one.

Dmitri Payet

What have Payet and Sanchez in common? They are both popular in the Pacific. The West Ham midfielder only received four votes, but three of those came from OFC nations.

Payet failed to get any number-ones but the New Zealand and Samoa managers both voted for the French star. Votes from the media representatives of New Caledonia and Togo also went to the midfielder.

So what is the moral of the votes? The Premier League's global reach remains as strong as ever.

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