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Ranking the 2018 FIFA Puskas Award nominees

The Best FIFA Football Awards - Show
The award was won by Olivier Giroud last year

Earlier this week FIFA revealed the nominees for the 2018 Puskas Award. The award is given to the player who scored the best goal of the year, and there are some excellent goals among the nominees. 

Olivier Giroud is the most recent winner of the award, emerging victorious in 2017 for his brilliant scorpion kick against Crystal Palace while he was at Arsenal. Previous winners of the award also include James Rodriguez, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Neymar.

The Puskas Award wasn’t the only one under discussion, with FIFA also announcing the nominees for the Best Men’s Player. They are Cristiano Ronaldo, Luka Modric and Mohamed Salah. This means that Lionel Messi misses out on a place in the final three for the first time since 2006. To put into perspective how long ago that was, the top three that year were Fabio Cannavaro, Zinedine Zidane, and Ronaldinho. 

As for the Puskas Award, the nominations are dominated goals scored at the World Cup, with four of the ten goals coming in Russia. Of the players nominated, Ronaldo is the only man to have won the award previously. He took home the inaugural award in 2009 for his stunning strike against Porto, while playing for Manchester United in the Champions League. 

Here are the ten nominees from this year’s award, ranked from worst, to best. 


#10 Mohamed Salah v Everton

Liverpool v Everton - Premier League
Salah scored 32 goals in the Premier League last season

Salah’s goal in the Merseyside Derby was actually scored in 2017, but came too late to be up for the award in that year. It was one of a shedload of excellent goals scored by Salah in the 2017/18 season, and given that it was against Everton, one of the more important ones to Liverpool fans. It was an excellent strike, beating Cuco Martina and Idrissa Gueye before curling into the far top corner.

However, this might not have actually been the best goal he scored last season, as he netted quite brilliantly in the first leg of the Champions League semi-final against Roma. Therefore, it comes in tenth in this list.

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