🌡 Hot Take: Individual awards are stupid. It's a team sport | OneFootball

I’ll let you in on a little secret. When I heard earlier this week that there will be no Ballon d’Or this year, I breathed a small sigh of relief.

Maybe I’m in the minority on this one though. The annual coronation of the world’s best footballer is wildly popular and our readers seem particularly engaged by the event each year.

Players love it too and at the top level, many of them now have it written into their contracts that they will receive huge bonuses for winning the Ballon d’Or.

But I find the whole thing utterly tedious, to be honest.

Will it be Lionel Messi? Will it be Cristiano Ronaldo? Who gives a toss?

They’re already recognised as two of the greatest players ever to have played the game, do we really need to go through this gauche ego-massaging exercise every 12 months?

And don’t get me started on Fifa’s The Best awards.

So you can probably imagine my annoyance at the discourse surrounding Jordan Henderson being named the Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year on Friday.

Now I don’t begrudge Henderson a bit of personal recognition for the season he’s had.

The 30-year-old has proved many of his doubters wrong (myself included) by captaining Liverpool to the Champions League and the Premier League title over the last couple of years, and though he might not be the most naturally gifted player in the world, ask any Liverpool fan and they’ll tell you how important he’s been to their success.

But has he actually been the best footballer in England this season? Has he even been the best player at Liverpool? I would suggest the answer to both of those questions is no.

Many would argue Kevin De Bruyne has been the standout player in the Premier League this year and the Manchester City passing machine needs just one more assist against Norwich this weekend to become only the second ever player to rack up 20 in a single Premier League campaign.

But should a City player win the Player of the Year award considering how far they’ve finished behind Liverpool in the title race?

Perhaps not, but then why did Mohamed Salah win it when Liverpool finished 4th in 2017/18?

There’s a distinct lack of consistency when it comes to these awards.

To be fair, the FWA’s award is usually given to someone who has done something a little more than just been the best player of the season.

It’s why Raheem Sterling won it last year, and these tweets from Alex Hess and Rob Brown perhaps best explain why Henderson got it this year …

Now that’s fair enough, but you could equally argue that De Bruyne has “a story”. In fact, almost every footballer has one if you look hard enough.

I personally think Sadio Mané has been Liverpool’s best player this season and his story of coming from a small village in Senegal to winning the Premier League title is far more interesting than Henderson’s.

Maybe Henderson won it because he’s English, he shouts a lot and seems like a nice lad. And that’s fair enough too, but when you start bringing all of these abstract reasons into play, it only serves to highlight the ridiculousness of handing out individual awards in a team sport.

We don’t need to vote on who wins the Premier League title because there’s a league table for that.

And we can confidently say Messi and Ronaldo are two of the greatest players of all time because they have the stats to back it up.

Nobody should have to do mental gymnastics to explain why Henderson deserves an individual award because nobody deserves an individual award in football.

There’s no “i” in team, after all.