Players from Chelsea and Spurs picked up the most coveted awards during a swanky night out in London for the Players Football Association Awards ceremony.
Anyone who has played football at any level knows the most prestigious personal award to collect is the one voted for by your fellow peers, and last night, the Players Football Association (PFA) voted N’Golo Kante as their Player of the Year.
The Chelsea and France midfield sensation is on course to be the first player to win back-to-back Premier League titles with two different clubs. Kante won the title with Leicester City in his only season at the club following his £5.6m arrival from Caen last season.
The Frenchman was the only high-profile player to leave the champions in the summer when he joined Chelsea for a reported £32m. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Leicester ended up scrapping for their lives at the wrong end of the table, while Chelsea emerged from the mid-tables blues to become the favourites to win this year’s honours.
Kante topped a short list that included Eden Hazard, Harry Kane, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Alexis Sanchez, and Romelu Lukaku, but was he deserving of his award?
There is a strong argument to be made that Tottenham’s Dele Alli would have made the short list had the votes been cast much later in the season. The PFA send ballot papers out to players several months before the season ends, which makes sense when you consider the early season form shown by Alexis Sanchez at Arsenal and the dynamic late season form of Alli.
Alli is the highest scoring midfield player in the country with 16 Premier League goals, and he also weighed in with five assists. Whereas Kante’s game is centred around his break up play with only Idrissa Gueye (127 v 110), and Ander Herrera (75 v 72) making more tackles and interceptions than any other player. On a side note, more than 40,000 BBC readers selected their best Premier League XI, and the most common pick was Dele Alli. Kante was the third choice behind Eden Hazard.
But Alli didn’t leave the swanky awards ceremony empty handed. The 20-year old picked up the PFA Young Player of the Year for the second successive season. Players from Spurs have now won the award five times in the past six seasons. Kyle Walker (2011-12), Gareth Bale (2012-13), and Harry Kane (2014-15) all have a version of the award in their respective sports rooms.
Kante becomes only the third Chelsea player to win the award since Norman Hunter picked up the first-ever award in 1973-74. Chelsea captain John Terry won the award in 2004-05, and Eden Hazard took the honours in 2014-15.
Manchester City defender Lucy Bronze won the Women’s PFA Player of the Year, Birmingham’s Jess Carter won the Women’s PFA Young Player of the Year, David Beckham won the PFA Merit Award for services to football, and retired women’s footballer Kelly Smith picked up the PFA Special Achievement award.
