The most popular footballers of the six football continents !
The election of the most popular footballers has been made in 2011 in three steps. In the 1st step IFFHS-members from all the football continents have nominated 90 candidates. Among them there were 32 Europeans, 18 South Americans, 14 Asians, 13 Africans, three players from Oceania as well as 10 from Central and North America.
In the 2nd step 977.276 users established which players had qualified for the 3rd step. These were the each three best-placed players from Africa, Asia and Central/North America, the each five best-placed players from South America and Europe as well as the best placed player from Oceania.
In the third step supporters of the two rival teams from Tehran (Esteghlal FC & Persepolis FC) have multiplied their respective votes with specially-made software programs from unofficial websites of these clubs and therefore manipulated the results in favour of their players. The supporters of the two clubs have even accused each other of having increased the number of the votes via technical manipulation - without knowing the actual results. The IFFHS was therefore forced to expel the two Iranian players from the vote. Farhad Majidi (Esteghlal FC Tehran) had 408.874 votes in the 3rd step and Ali Karimi (Persepolis FC Tehran) 956.172.
We kindly ask the two innocent Iranian players and their clubs to understand this decision. 7DC GmbH (Dortmund) will make technical changes in order to avoid any further manipulation in future.
Africa‘s most popular footballer in 2011 has become the 35 years-old Moroccan international goalkeeper Nadir Lamyaghri, from African Champions League-finalist Wydad AC Casablanca. In Africa those footballers who play in their native lands and not in Europe are much more appreciated.
In Asia Yasser Al-Qahtani (Saudi Arabia) is in 2011 Asian most Popular still active Footballer for the 3rd time, after 2007 and 2009; he now plays in the UAE. In the CONCACAF zone, as expected, the Mexican Javier Hernández, who plays in England, has been chosen as the most popular footballer in 2011, while in Oceania it was once more "Harry" Kewell.
South America‘s most Popular still active Footballer in 2011 is 22 years-old Eduardo Jesús Vargas, who won the Copa Sudamericana with CD Universidad de Chile Santiago in December, became South America’s 2011 second-best footballer and moved in Janury 2012 to Italy to play for SSC Napoli. After the Chilean goalgetter, world stars "Leo" Messi and »Kaká«, who have been playing in Europe for many years, reached the 2nd and 3rd place.
Europe‘s most Popular still active Footballer in 2011 is 35 years-old Francesco Totti, who plays for AS Roma since 1989, narrowly ahead of his 37 year-old Italian countryman Alessandro Del Piero, who plays for "Juve" since 1993. They are both icons of European football, whose loyalty to the clubs is both exemplary and much appreciated. The current best European footballer Cristiano Ronaldo reached position 3.