Thomas Tuchel, Emma Hayes, Édouard Mendy named The Best by FIFA

FIFA held their annual ‘The Best’ awards shindig tonight in Zürich, and Chelsea had a fantastic night, collecting three awards and seeing four players named among the best 22 in the world.

Starting with the coaches, we have both Thomas Tuchel and Emma Hayes being named The Best in the world, the first to no one’s surprise, the latter somewhat surprisingly considering she was going up against Barcelona’s Lluis Cortés. Either way, it goes to show just how lucky we are to have them working for our club — and hopefully for many, many more years (even in Tuchel’s case).

In addition to the coaches, we also had a player collect a big prize, with Édouard Mendy getting rightly recognized after getting overlooked by UEFA for the Yashin Award. Whereas UEFA voting is done by journalists, these FIFA awards are mostly voted on by other (national team) players and managers. You might say these mean more, getting recognized by your peers. The votes are also made public, which means that we can see all those who voted correctly, such as Thiago Silva, Eden Hazard, Luka Modrić, and Harry Kane.

Congrats, Édou (and please come back soon)!

Other big awards went to Robert Lewandowski for the second straight year (men’s player, beating out Messi and Salah), Alexia Putellas (women’s player, as expected, from Barcelona), Christine Endler (women’s goalkeeper, beating out Ann-Katrin Berger), and Erik Lamela (Puskás Award). N’Golo Kanté and Jorginho were both voted into the FIFPro Men’s World XI (though not Mendy, which is weird), while Millie Bright and Magdalena Eriksson made the FIFPro Women’s World XI.

Congrats, all!