Messi, Ronaldo & Salah among nominees

ZURICH: Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Mohammad Salah and Robert Lewandowski are among the candidates shortlisted for this year's Best FIFA Men's Player Award.

Thiago Alcantara, Kevin De Bruyne, Sadio Mane, Kylian Mbappe, Neymar, Sergio Ramos and Virgil van Dijk are the other nominees for the men's award which was won by Messi last year.

Lewandowski is the man best placed to dethrone the Barcelona superstar, having already won the UEFA Men's Player of the Year Award for firing Bayern Munich to Champions League glory in 2019-20.

The list of nominees for Best FIFA Women's Player Award includes Lucy Bronze, Delphine Cascarino, Caroline Graham Hansen, Pernille Harder, Jennifer Hermoso, Ji So-yun, Sam Kerr, Saki Kumagai, Dzsenifer Marozsan, Vivianne Miedema and Wendie Renard.

For Best FIFA Women's Goalkeeper Award, the nominees are Ann-Katrin Berger, Sarah Bouhaddi, Christiane Endler, Hedvig Lindahl, Alyssa Naeher and Ellie Roebuck.

In the men's category, the shortlisted candidates are Alisson Becker, Thibaut Courtois, Keylor Navas, Manuel Neuer, Jan Oblak and Marc-Andre ter Stegen.

For Best FIFA Women's Coach Award, Lluis Cortes, Rita Guarino, Emma Hayes, Stephan Lerch, Hege Riise, Jean-Luc Vasseur and Sarina Wiegman are among the shortlisted candidates.

In the men's category, Marcelo Bielsa, Hans-Dieter Flick, Jurgen Klopp, Julen Lopetegui and Zinedine Zidane are among the nominees.

Two expert panels — one for women's football and one for men's football — have selected the candidates for each category, FIFA said on its website on Wednesday. The winners are voted for by the national team captains and coaches, 200 journalists, as well as an online ballot of fans. The voting will run from November 25 to December 9. The award ceremony, which was earlier scheduled to take place in September but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, will be held virtually on December 17. (IANS)

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