Ronaldo completed a clean sweep of football’s major individual awards when he was named FIFA World Player of the Year in Madrid last night.
The Brazilian picked up the award for the third time in his career, beating offcompetition from Germany goalkeeper Oliver Kahn and France’s Zinedine Zidane. Earlier in the week, the Real Madrid striker was voted European Footballer of the Year, and last week, readers of World Soccer voted Ronaldo their player of the year.
The FIFA award completed a hat-trick of prizes on the night for the Real Madrid star, who was also given the Golden Shoe as leading scorer at the World Cup finals and the Silver Ball as that tournament’s second-best player.
Other awards were handed to Oliver Kahn ,who was voted the World Cup’s most valuable player and also received the Lev Yashin award as its best goalkeeper.
Kahn’s internationalcolleague, the Kaiserslautern forward Miroslav Klose, shared the Silver Shoe as joint second-top scorer in finals with Rivaldo, while Belgium won the Fair Play award.
