Sportskeeda Football Awards 2016: Defender of the Year

It’s time to award the best!

We live in an age where attacking players are becoming the talk of the town more often than not, there exists a breed of players who love to sit back and defend. When people speak of football, it's the likes of Pele, Maradona, Messi, Ronaldo, etc that cone to mind first for almost all the people in the world. Nobody talks about Paolo Maldini, Carlos Alberto Torres or Franz Beckenbauer.

Forget the history, just look at the recent votings in the Ballon d'Or poll. Highly renowned journalists are the ones who cast their votes in it, and yet only one defender made the list. Along with that one defender, it was just one more goalkeeper made the list.

Here at Sportskeeda, we do not forget the contributions the defenders made to their respective teams. Every single one of them counted, and after analysing a lot, we came up with ten names who made a huge impact for their team in the calendar year.

The top 10 we came up with were: Sergio Ramos, Pepe, Wes Morgan, Jérôme Boateng, Laurent Koscielny, Filipe Luis, Marcelo, Leonardo Bonucci, Toby Alderweireld and Diego Godin.

The voting by fans

We sent out a poll for fans to vote for who they believed to have been the best defender this year. Apart from that, the in-house team had a discussion of its own on the same.

The one with the highest vote recieved 10 points, and the one with the lowest got 1 point. The scores from Sportskeeda’s list and the Reader’s choice are then added together, with an average score being taken. In the situation of two players being tied, Sportskeeda’s ranking takes preference.