Sportskeeda Football Awards 2015: And the winners are...
As another year came to a close, we asked the readers of Sportskeeda to vote for the standout performers in the calendar year 2015. It was an eventful year as we witnessed Barcelona stamp their dominance by winning five trophies, Chile winning the Copa America, PSG completing a domestic quadruple, Juventus winning a double and Bayern Munich winning a third consecutive Bundesliga title, on their way to a fourth. The readers were asked to vote for their choices in five different categories. Here are the winners!
#1 Best Manager: Luis Enrique Barcelona
There was almost no competition for the Best Manager of 2015 as Luis Enrique won the award with 62% of the votes. As mentioned earlier, Barcelona won five trophies in 2015 – the UEFA Champions League, La Liga, Copa del Rey, the FIFA Club World Cup and the UEFA Super Cup! They had also played for the Supercopa de España but lost to Athletic Bilbao on aggregate.
They were almost undefeated in the Champions League in 2015, losing just once to Bayern Munich but eventually winning the tie on aggregate. To make the win more impressive, they had beaten the defending champions from the EPL (Manchester City), Ligue 1 (PSG), Bundesliga (Bayern Munich) and Serie A (Juventus) in the knockout stages to win the 2014/15 title.
Enrique will have the trio of Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar to thank for the Catalan club’s success last year. The MSN trio smashed records and didn’t miss a step even when Messi was out injured for two months last year. The Spanish boss has overseen a very successful period despite a transfer ban rightly wins the award for 2015.
Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri came in second for turning around the Foxes’ fortunes in the second half of 2015 while Arsene Wenger came in third after being the best Premier League team for 2015.
| # | MANAGER | CLUB | VOTES |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Luis Enrique | Barcelona | 62% |
| 2 | Claudio Ranieri | Leicester City | 14% |
| 3 | Arsene Wenger | Arsenal | 9% |