Maradona Thinks PoTY Voting Rules are Stupid

January 20th, 2009 | by: Laurie |

Is anybody else secretly glad that Diego Maradona is back in the public eye making public quotes? What in the world did we bloggers ever write about before?

His latest gripe? That the Player of the Year voting rules are stupid because he couldn’t vote for Lionel Messi.

“I had to choose somebody else, knowing that Lionel Messi is the best player in the world,” the Argentina coach told reporters, adding that he had voted for Manchester United and Portugal forward Cristiano Ronaldo instead.

Maradona said the rules banned coaches from voting for players from their own country.

“Whoever thought that up is stupid,” he said. “It’s incredible, I voted for Ronaldo when I wanted to vote for Messi but I couldn’t.” …

The FIFA award is based on votes by the national team coaches and captains of the 208 member associations of world soccer’s governing body.

I guess I’d probably be pretty upset under the same circumstances (although I’m not sure there’s any way I’d vote for Ronaldo, just because. Fernando Torres, maybe.)

I’m thinking that when Maradona gets sacked for Argentina, it would be a l ot of fun to let him replace Sepp Blatter at FIFA so he could make all the rules himself?

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Nolan

It’s like how last year Rafael Marquez voted Ronaldinho, Eto’o and Deco as his top 3 choices. Notice a pattern?

This year he must have felt guilty, because he put Ronaldo ahead of Messi and Eto’o.
Amit Singh

Laurie
What Maradona said is not entirely stupid, he does have a point. Everyone should be allowed to express their choice not everyone is biased and if the bias does exist it will kind of cancel out.
http://theoffside.com laurie

Amit, I actually don’t disagree with you. In my heart, I kind of agree with Maradona on this point.

If I had any point at all, it’s that there’s nobody else in the footballing world who can get away with making these kinds of statements on a regular basis, which is what makes Maradona so endlessly entertaining.
foureyedkoko

He should have traded votes with Queiroz:

“Hey, I voted for Ronaldo, you vote for Messi.”