Abou Trika overooked for Ballon d'Or?

The latest international conspiracy against Egypt:

Scandalously, the France Football editorial team who selected the 30 players for whom their worldwide panel of journalists are allowed to vote overlooked the Al Ahly and Egypt playmaker Mohamed Aboutrika.

Fifa won't compensate for this offensive anomaly. Their shortlist doesn't include Aboutrika either. Nor anyone else from Egypt's recent vintage. Hardly surprising given that Fifa doesn't even rank Egypt, winners of the last two African Cups of Nations, as the best team in Africa. Not enough Europe-based players, perhaps.

[From Football: Paul Doyle on the nonsense of the Ballon d'Or]

(Thanks, X.)

Comments

[Ibn Kafka]

On purely footballistic grounds, I'd side with Paul Doyle - and being Moroccan, I can hardly be accused of excessive sympathy for their national side or their players - rather pity, as the poor *§+% never win against us...

Still, I feel they are a bit hard-changed - not only Abutrika - and not nearly as respected as previous winners of the African Cup - for some reason, teams from south of the Sahara seem to get more credit when they win...

[Rob]

This is a good article but Im not sure how fair of an arguement that AbuTrika point is. I think its a huge stretch to call him a top 30 player in the world. Sure, he dominates in Egypt but the competiion is much weaker than in Europe so its not really clear how good he is. There are other Egyptians who play in the Premiere League and do decently, so why not Abu Trika? So in my view until he shows his skills against premiere competition I think its hard to consider him for this award.

[Le Café Politicien]

We must encourage poor countries to create their own tournament. It's the only way to stop discrimination.