Didier Drogba and Carlo Ancelotti Shortlisted for Major Awards

The FIFA World Player of the year has been annexed into UEFA's Ballon d'Or, which used to represent the best player in Europe but has been expanded into a worldwide award for this year (since, really, the best player in Europe is probably going to be the best player in the world). There's also a Mourinho of the Year Manager of the Year award, and the two are the most prestigious individual honours in football.

As you might have gathered from the title, Didier Drogba has made the shortlist for the Ballon d'Or, and Carlo Ancelotti has done similarly for the Manager of the Year. Neither of them really deserve to win it, in my opinion - Xavi, Leo Messi, or Bastian Schweinsteiger all deserve Player of the Year over Droggles, despite an excellent domestic campaign by our striker, and Jose Mourinho is on an entirely different level as a manager than most anybody else on the planet.

It's interesting that there are only three players in the Premier League shortlisted - Sunderland's Asamoah Gyan and Arsenal's Cesc Fabregas, and no Englishmen are on the list of 23. Naturally, many are taking the reactionary tack of proclaiming this as one of the death knells of English football, which is slightly silly. The selection criteria appears to be mostly random, but you can bet that "being on a team that does well in the World Cup/Champions League" is one of them, and we've already had an English freakout over those things already, so there's no point flipping out all over again. Not that that will stop anyone.

Also, Ashley Cole not making the list? Silly.