World Cup-winning goalkeeper Manuel Neuer is the only barrier to Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi extending their six-year domination of Fifa’s player of the year award on Monday.
Germany's Neuer is the latest third man on the shortlist who will be trying to break the tight grip the free-scoring superstars have on football's highest individual honour.
Ronaldo edged Messi for the 2008 and 2013 prizes, and he was runner-up in three of his great rival’s four straight wins from 2009-12.
No keeper has won since Fifa created its award in 1991, although the Germany and Bayern Munich No 1’s all-around skill and game awareness made him a standout in 2014.
“He has in recent years shaped how goalkeepers play like no one before him,” Germany coach Joachim Loew told the Bild daily this week.
Despite leading Germany to World Cup victory in Brazil, Neuer is seen as the outsider for the award because Ronaldo and Messi set more scoring records last year.
Ronaldo scored 61 goals for Real Madrid and Portugal, and his record tally of 17 in a Uefa Champions League season helped his club win a 10th European title.
Messi set the career scoring records in the Champions League and Spain’s Primera Liga in November, just as national team captains and coaches and selected journalists around the world were filling their Ballon d’Or ballots.
Messi's teams, though, won no trophies: Argentina lost the World Cup final and he failed to score in four knockout rounds, while Barcelona were beaten by Atletico Madrid in the Champions League quarter-finals and for the Spanish title.
Even Messi’s Golden Ball award for best player in Brazil “surprised” Fifa president Sepp Blatter.
Neuer supporters include veteran coach Ottmar Hitzfeld, whose Switzerland team exited in the last-16 round in Brazil after Messi created an extra-time goal for Angel Di Maria.
“He’s the prototype of a modern goalkeeper and it’s about time that kind of player was selected for the award,” the German said.
The Fifa Ballon d’Or, which merged with the original award presented since 1956 by France Football magazine, is the main honour in the annual ceremony in Zurich.
A Germany goalkeeper won the women’s honour last year, though Nadine Angerer is not nominated to defend her title on Monday.
Five-time winner Marta of Brazil, United States forward Abby Wambach, who won in 2012, and Germany midfielder Nadine Kessler are on the shortlist.
The contest brings Marta and Wambach to Zurich when both are supporting a gender discrimination lawsuit filed in Canada for Fifa allowing that country to stage the 2015 Women’s World Cup on artificial turf pitches.
In the men’s coaching award, Loew is a strong contender against the two club coaches from Madrid: Italian Carlo Ancelotti for Real and Atletico’s Diego Simeone from Argentina.
The coaching award for women’s football is contested between two men – Ralf Kellermann of Champions League winner Wolfsburg and Norio Sasaki, coach of Japan’s Asian Cup winner – and one woman, Maren Meinert, who guided Germany to victory in the Under-20 World Cup.
Women’s football can strike a notable win in the Puskas Award for most beautiful goal.
Ireland forward Stephanie Roche’s goal in an amateur domestic league match for Peamount United is shortlisted for the fan-voted prize against World Cup goals by James Rodriguez for Colombia against Uruguay and Robin van Persie for the Netherlands against Spain.
Roche has been supported by a voting campaign in her home country to beat her more illustrious rivals.
Blatter will make his first public appearance and speech at the ceremony since his Fifa executive committee colleague Prince Ali bin Hussein of Jordan declared on Tuesday as a candidate for the presidential election in May.
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