Carli Lloyd wins 2016 FIFA Best award

Carli Lloyd has won FIFA’s best female player in the world for a second year in a row. This follows her 2015 win after she helped propel the United States to a World Cup win against Japan.

Lloyd was awarded the 2016 FIFA Best trophy for her performance in the Olympics and for her club the Houston Dash, who finished eighth in NWSL rankings. The United States were of course knocked out of the Olympics by Sweden in the quarterfinals. Lloyd personally registered 17 goals and 11 assists in 21 games for the United States, as well as five goals and three assists in seven games for Houston.

This year Lloyd’s fellow final nominees were Brazil’s Marta and Germany’s Melanie Behringer. Marta did her best to guide Brazil to a medal at the Olympics, but they were cruelly knocked out on penalty kicks against Sweden in the semifinals after a thriller against Australia that also went to PKs. Her team in the Damallsvenskan, FC Rosengård, were league runners up in 2016. Behringer’s Bayern Munich were top of the Bundesliga in 2016 and Germany beat Sweden at the Olympics to win the gold medal.

“I honestly wasn’t expecting this,” Lloyd said in her acceptance speech, before lauding her co-nominees and praising her teammates and coaching staff.

FIFA Best voting is done by a combination of team captains and coaches, media representatives from each member nation, and fans. According to FIFA, “Fans' votes will count for 25 per cent of the total ballot. The remaining 75 per cent will be distributed evenly between the national coaches of FIFA Member Associations, their team captains and a select group of football journalists from those countries.”