The Final Round of the Ballon d'Or

Ronaldo, Messi, Neuer Steps Up For 2014 Ballon d’Or

The contenders for this year’s FIFA Ballon d’Or award for the best player of 2014 and

for the FIFA Male and Female World Player of the Year 2014 award were announced today on FIFA.com.

In alphabetical order, the FIFA Ballon d’Or nominees are: Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal), Lionel Messi (Argentina) and Manuel Neuer (Germany) for the men, while Nadine Kessler (Germany), Marta (Brazil) and Abby Wambach (USA) will contest the women’s award.

The candidates for the FIFA World Coach of the Year for Men’s Football and FIFA World Coach of the Year for both Men and Women’s Coach awards were also announced. In alphabetical order, the contenders are: Carlo Ancelotti (Italy/Real Madrid CF), Joachim Loew (Germany/German national team) and Diego Simeone (Argentina/Atletico de Madrid) for the FIFA World Coach of the Year for Men’s Football award, and Ralf Kellermann (Germany/VfL Wolfsburg), Maren Meinert (Germany/Germany U-19 and U-20 national teams) and Norio Sasaki (Japan/Japan national team) for the FIFA World Coach of the Year for Women’s Football award.

All the nominees were confirmed after a voting process which was open to the captains and head coaches of the men’s and women’s national teams of the 209 member associations as well as to international media representatives selected by FIFA and France Football voted for candidates.