Whereas last year was domi’nated by Liverpool and Bayern Munich — the clubs comb’ined for eight of the 10 No.

 

1 spots — the leaders in th’is year’s edition are spread across six teams, with no’ne having more than two men on top of their respective cat’egory.

 

 

 

One common theme, though, was tha’t all but two of the 10 leaders won silverware in the pa’st 12 months, be it at club or international level. Wh’ich is kind of what we wanted voters to think about:

 

 

Pu’t reputation to one side and focus instead on a “what h’ave you done for me lately?” approach, with the ye’ar’s top performers getting their due.

 

 

 

Once again, there is large-sc’ale turnover of names, with 41 new entries (compared to 4’7 in 2020 and 43 in 2019). Meanwhile, there are 28 natio’nalities,

 

 

with 26 clubs represented, plus three intern’ational teams.