The online voting form for the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) annual awards includes some useful guidance beyond being able to select English, French or Spanish as your language of choice — something that wasn’t a consideration back in 1974 when Norman Hunter was named as the inaugural Players’ Player of the Year.
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One little self-help tip emerges on the back of a conversation with a Premier League player about whether he has voted or not, and after another top-flight footballer had earlier told The Athletic “nothing has been handed out, we haven’t even done it yet”.
“I know I voted this year because I picked Ilkay Gundogan as Player of the Year and I didn’t know how to spell his name,” the player explains with a little chuckle and sounding very much like football writers everywhere. “But as I went to type it, it auto-corrected for me on the dropdown box.”
Anything to make life a bit easier has to be a good thing, especially as it sounds as though voter apathy is a problem in the football world, just as it is pretty much everywhere else. Reminders sent out on team WhatsApp groups over the last week or so tell their own story, namely that plenty more votes need to be cast before the ballot closes on May 14.
“Oh my God, they’ve got no hope!” Graeme Le Saux says laughing, after learning that the pandemic means the PFA is now operating in a digital world when it comes to the players’ ballot. “If they struggled to write it down on a piece of paper when I was playing, then online could be even more challenging.”
Le Saux was Chelsea’s PFA delegate back in the day and smiles knowingly as he hears stories about the current generation being disengaged when it comes to submitting award nominations, and in some cases deliberately not voting for a certain player.
“It was hard work at Chelsea, I have to say,” Le Saux adds. “I didn’t look forward to doing it (getting the forms completed). It was like being a schoolteacher chasing kids for their homework. I had to go around grabbing people by the scruff of the neck and taking them into my temporary office, which was the dressing room. You had to threaten players and say, ‘You cannot go up to the canteen and have lunch until you’ve done this!’. Some players did show diligence and took responsibility for it, but others would quite happily say, ‘Can someone else fill it in and I’ll sign it?’.”
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Although the main awards — Players’ Player of the Year and Young Player of the Year — are well respected and recognised as prestigious individual honours to win, the overriding impression after talking to a cross-section of players last week is that the voting process is viewed as a bit of a chore. The word “ballache” cropped up several times, especially about naming the best XI in their league, and on top of that, some curious voting tactics emerged too.
“One thing I’ve always found is that lads put their mates in a lot,” says the Premier League player who voted for Gundogan. “If I couldn’t pick a left-back, I would pick my mate who plays for another team at left-back — that’s what players do.
“Also, there could be a player who you know is good but players can’t stand, so you don’t put him in because you wouldn’t want him to get the plaudits. And that is how it is. For example, someone might rub some people up the wrong way. So the lads would say, ‘I’m not putting him in’. It’s like that, quite pack-ish.”
Le Saux, who was named in the PFA’s Premier League Team of the Year on two occasions, knows exactly how it works. “Players are definitely thinking, ‘I’m not going to pick him because I don’t like him. He plays for the wrong team so I’m not going to vote for him’. If someone booted you in a game, or made you look stupid, there’s probably half a chance he’s not getting in. Shall we say there’s a lot of unconscious bias… or conscious bias. Not related to discrimination, but definitely, players will hold a grudge.”
Charlie Adam, who was named in the Championship Team of the Year when he won promotion with Blackpool in 2010 and nominated for the Player of the Year award 12 months later, nods. “You’re going to get that,” he says. “And you’re going to get players who are not going to vote for rival players — that’s the nature of it. Also, just as an example, why would Kevin De Bruyne vote for Bruno Fernandes, or want all his team-mates to vote for him?”
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Adam, who is now playing for Dundee, stresses that he has always thought highly of the awards, submitted his nominations every year and “taken it seriously because at the end of the day, I respect my peers and it’s important that the best players get voted”. He knows, though, that not everyone feels the same way as him.
“To be fair, the majority of the lads (at Stoke) would fill them out. But I don’t know if half of them would have a clue who the Player of the Year was — everybody would be asking,” Adam says. “I wouldn’t say that the lads never did it, but it was just a ballache for them.”
The PFA’s online voting form is about as straightforward as it gets. After entering your name and email address in section one, there are two award categories to pick in section two — Player of the Year and Young Player of the Year (aged 23 or under at the beginning of the season) — and 11 players to select in the divisional Team of the Year in section three.
While players from all four divisions vote for the main two awards, the instructions make it clear that the Team of the Year “should only be comprised of players from your own division”. That partly explains why a footballer may end up being shortlisted for Player of the Year but not make Team of the Year — something that happened to Eden Hazard in 2019 and Adam in 2011. “I was a bit disappointed with that,” Adam says. “To get in the Team of the Year would have been even better.”
Players are also told that “you may not vote for any player at your own club in any section of the ballot”. As for those who shy away from submitting their nominations, there is a warning of sorts: “A player is only entitled to receive an award providing that the players at their own club have participated in the ballot”.
The natural assumption among many football supporters would probably be that the categories prompt fierce debate in changing rooms up and down the country, in the same way as they would if they were posted on social media. The reality, however, is rather different.
“Everywhere I’ve been the boys have always filled out the forms, including the Team of the Year, but everyone does it because they have to, it’s not like they’re really interested in it,” another prominent Premier League player tells The Athletic. “I would give my vote for who I thought was the Player of the Year and Young Player of the Year, but that’s as much as I’d be interested in. No one really talks about (the Team of the Year) and says, ‘Nah, he shouldn’t have been in, you should have gone for him’.”
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But surely being recognised by your peers counts for something significant? “In terms of fellow pros voting, it does mean a lot because they’re the ones you play against week in and week out,” the same player replies. “But you probably get 50 per cent of the pros who do it will do it properly. So I don’t know if the results are fully accurate. I think a more accurate way of doing it would be to ask the managers.”
It certainly sounds as though the voting can be a bit hit and miss at times. “I’ve been at clubs where players have voted for players who have had absolute shockers against them, just on the back of, ‘Oh, we got six points off them because of him, so let’s just vote him in as a thank you’,” Padraig Amond, the Newport County striker, tells The Athletic.
Amond, to be clear, has a lot of time for the PFA. He is not the sort to make a joke of the awards himself and was quick to register his choices when the link was sent out on Newport’s player chat last month. “Whether any of the other lads did or not, I don’t know,” he adds. “I think a lot of players do see it as a bit of a ballache.”
Despite some curious decisions being made at the ballot box, and all sorts of agendas at play, Le Saux makes the point that “there are enough players voting for it that generally, the players that get picked are the right players. So by the time you see the team, there aren’t that many surprises”.
That might be so but some talented players have slipped through the net over the years. Sergio Aguero is widely recognised as one of the greatest goalscorers in Premier League history but it was not until his seventh season with Manchester City that he was voted into the team of the year — arguably helped by the fact that the PFA changed the formation in that 2017-18 season from 4-4-2 to 4-3-3, allowing a place for an extra forward.
Paul Pogba made the Premier League Team of the Year in 2018-19, but there was no place for Mohamed Salah or Eden Hazard — some people within the PFA put that down to the Manchester United midfielder enjoying a purple patch at the time of the voting, which has been another issue over the years because the ballot used to take place well before the end of the season.
Xabi Alonso never made the cut during his five years at Liverpool and the same goes for Gianfranco Zola at Chelsea. “Wow,” says Le Saux, sounding taken aback. “And that’s where it is harsh. Because you look at them and think they easily played well enough to get in those teams but there was just someone at that time who stood out or played for a team that was really successful that season and they got in because of that. So there are lots of anomalies.”
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So how are players basing their decisions: on what they have witnessed across a season or what they have experienced in a game? “A bit of both,” says the Premier League player who suggested managers would be better qualified to choose divisional teams. “Attacking-wise, I’d generally go for the people who have scored the most goals or got the most assists, unless there is one stand-out player who is just brilliant to watch. Defensive-wise, I’d probably go for the defenders that I found most tough to play against.”
In a pre-COVID-19 world, the PFA would often send a member of staff (usually one of their delegate liaison officers) into clubs to get the players to complete the forms over lunch after training, essentially guaranteeing that people vote. Several players even talk about being presented with names of potential candidates, or a spreadsheet, to narrow the field and make the job easier.
“You used to get a list of players, even for the young player of the year,” Adam explains. “So you’d have seven or eight goalkeepers, then all the defenders at Man City and Liverpool (for example), to help you pick your players.”
On other occasions, it has been left to the PFA delegate at each club to hand out the paperwork, make sure that the forms are completed on time and then return them to the union — something that sounds simple enough in theory but, as Le Saux explained at the start, was often a thankless task.
Martin Keown was the PFA delegate at Arsenal during his playing days and wrote a piece for the Daily Mail eight years ago saying that he would “do well” to get half his team-mates to complete their voting forms. To try to engage them in the process of picking a best XI, Keown decided to write a shortlist of players for each position on a whiteboard.
Brede Hangeland, who was Fulham’s PFA delegate during his time at Craven Cottage, smiles. “I didn’t find it quite as bad as that,” he says. “My strategy was during lunchtime, when they were all in the canteen, I’d hand out the forms and have some fun with it, then you can have a discussion and people will get into it a little bit more. I think most years I managed to get players to pick their own team without having to do it for them because that’s not the point, is it?
“In terms of the PFA Team of the Year, that was probably the easiest thing to get players involved in when it comes to anything to do with the union. Of course the reason for that is, if you look from a Premier League player’s point of view, rarely will you need the union for anything. Whereas if you play low down the league system, you’re more likely to need their help.
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“I think it boils down to a little bit of social conscience on the part of Premier League players to get involved and realise you are part of something bigger. And I suppose I was lucky when I was at Fulham that there were a lot of good guys there and at least some of them could see that point.”
Hangeland chuckles at what he is about to say next. “When you are the PFA delegate it’s not a massive workload, to say the least, especially not in the Premier League clubs that I’m familiar with. I always thought that this was one of the most important tasks of the year. But the involvement of the squad will be an extension of the involvement of the PFA delegate in that team, so there will be some PFA delegates who do some work and care about it. And there will be someone who was just appointed because no one else wants to do it, and obviously that will make a difference.”
Talking to footballers across the last week, it was hard to escape the feeling that not an awful lot of thought goes into their Team of the Year nominations. One former PFA delegate estimates that, in the lower leagues, 70 per cent of players neither care nor notice whom they are playing against from week to week. Several Championship players said similar and also raised an obvious issue.
“You play the same time as every other player (in your league),” one experienced Championship footballer told The Athletic. “So the only time you ever watch other teams in your league is when you play against them, or they might be the Friday night game, and that’s if you can be bothered to watch a Championship game on a Friday night. Quite frankly, a lot of people have got better things to do than watch Sheffield Wednesday versus Barnsley and say, ‘Oh, bloody hell, he’s playing well’.
“After a game, you might say, ‘He’s a good player’. Like we played against QPR last year and you’d say, ‘That (Eberechi) Eze is a good player, I think he’ll go a long way’. Then come the end of the season it might be in the back of your mind when you’re filling out a form.
“But you want to watch the best. So, in reality, I’ve seen Phil Foden play a lot more than, say, (Emiliano) Buendia. I’ve probably seen Man City 10 or 15 times, so that’s probably more of a talking point and means that you feel like you’ve got more of an opinion on certain Premier League players.
“To be honest, if it wasn’t for stats, or what you read on social media, I don’t think myself or many others would have a clue how anyone has been this season in the Championship, other than when you play against them.”
Another Championship player who has spent the majority of his career in the Premier League echoes those sentiments. “I wouldn’t be able to pick you a team,” he admits. “Maybe (Ivan) Toney up front. Defenders, I would not have a clue. Midfielders… Will Hughes but, again, that’s just because I think he’s a good player. I suppose a lot of the Norwich lads should be in — Buendia, (Teemu) Pukki. But it will be names that you just remember from previous years. I’d find the Premier League much easier.”
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Amond agrees. “I vote every year. But you’re not that qualified to vote in your own league because of what the other players said. League Two games are Saturday at 3pm or Tuesday at 7.45pm. And if you’re not playing, it’s not on TV. So you’re going off mates at other clubs saying how a player is doing.”
It is hard to imagine many players going to the trouble of contacting a friend at another club to get the inside track, bearing in mind the stories we have heard about a team-mate, or member of PFA staff, needing to almost stand over someone to make sure that they vote. That is why Le Saux reacted in the way that he did when online voting was mentioned — will players really be bothered to click the link in their email, or team WhatsApp group, and make their choices?
Before everyone piles into footballers for being lazy and disengaged — and nobody is disputing there is an element of that here — it is perhaps worth taking a step back, thinking about your own profession and asking yourself how interested you would be in voting for people who work for a different employer within the same industry. After all, football is a job for players and viewed through a totally different lens to supporters.
Le Saux points to a bigger, underlying issue with the union and its members. “The relevance of the PFA has diminished over the years, particularly with the Premier League players — they don’t have a relationship with them,” he says. “Look at the awards dinner — it seems so archaic. Look at who actually goes to that. There are no Premier League players who go unless they’ve won something. It’s tables of League One and League Two players.”
That dinner will not be taking place for the second year running, which together with the introduction of online voting has allowed the PFA to push back the ballot deadline, meaning that players can make a judgment near the end of the season, rather than with two months remaining.
Whether they decide to cast their vote, or how they make their choices, is a different matter altogether.
(Photos: Getty Images/Design: Sam Richardson)
