WORLD SOCCER PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Jean-Pierre PAPIN
1991
Top of the world…Papin
Man of the world
J
ean-Pierre Papin of Marseille and France is your choice as World Player of the Year in a first awards French clean sweep. Papin scored 25 per cent of the vote – in the ten years of the awards only five players have achieved better. Also, Papin is the first non-Italy based player to win the award. Papin’s consistency through the year has been marked at domestic, international club, and national team level. He was a league champion and the top goalscorer in France, a European Cup runner-up and has been a key member of the French national team which qualified before any other country for the 1992 European Championships in Sweden. Runner-up to Papin was Robert Prosinecki and just behind him, in third place, fellow Yugoslav Darko Pancev. They owe their high ratings to Red Star Belgrade’s European Cup triumph. Who knows, they might have finished even higher had Red Star played the final in the style which took them that far? Mark Hughes is the top British player, thanks to his high international profile with Manchester United in the European Cup Winners’ Cup and with Wales in European Championship qualifying. Last year’s winner, Lothar Matthaus, is the top Italian-based player, in fourth, followed by Gianluca Vialli of Sampdoria and Fiorentina’s Gabriel Batistuta – who joined the Italian club after scoring the goals which lifted Argentina to the South American Championship this year.
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ICONIC TEAMS PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Captain fantastic… Marseille’s Papin
