Player of the year award

Several sports leagues honour their best player with an award called Player of the Year. In the United States, this type of award is usually called a Most Valuable Player award. The awards with the "player of the year" phrasing include these.

Association football

In association football, this award is held on both an international and national level.

Premier League

The Premier League is an English professional league for men's association football clubs. At the top of the English football league system, it is the country's primary football competition. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the Football League. Welsh clubs that compete in the English football league system can also qualify.

The Premier League is a corporation in which the 20 member clubs act as shareholders. Seasons run from August to May. Teams play 38 matches each (playing each team in the league twice, home and away), totalling 380 matches in the season. Most games are played on Saturday and Sunday afternoons; others during weekday evenings. It is currently sponsored by Barclays Bank and thus officially known as the Barclays Premier League and is colloquially known as the Premiership. Outside the UK it is commonly referred to as the English Premier League (EPL).

The competition formed as the FA Premier League on 20 February 1992 following the decision of clubs in the Football League First Division to break away from the Football League, which was originally founded in 1888, and take advantage of a lucrative television rights deal. The deal was worth £1 billion a year domestically as of 2013–14, with BSkyB and BT Group securing the domestic rights to broadcast 116 and 38 games respectively. The league generates €2.2 billion per year in domestic and international television rights. In 2014/15, teams were apportioned revenues of £1.6 billion.

Cristiano Ronaldo

Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro, GOIH (born 5 February 1985), known as Cristiano Ronaldo (Portuguese pronunciation: [kɾɨʃtiˈɐnu ʁuˈnaɫdu]), is a Portuguese professional footballer who plays for Spanish club Real Madrid and the Portugal national team. He is a forward and serves as captain for Portugal. By the age of 22, Ronaldo had received Ballon d'Or and FIFA World Player of the Year nominations. The following year, in 2008, he won his first Ballon d'Or and FIFA World Player of the Year awards. He then won the FIFA Ballon d'Or in 2013 and 2014. In September 2015, Ronaldo scored his 500th senior career goal for club and country.

Often ranked as the best player in the world and rated by some in the sport as the greatest of all time, in 2015 Ronaldo was named the best Portuguese player of all time by the Portuguese Football Federation, during its 100th anniversary celebrations. He is the first player to win four European Golden Shoe awards. With Manchester United and Real Madrid, Ronaldo has won three Premier Leagues, one La Liga, one FA Cup, two Football League Cups, two Copas del Rey, two UEFA Champions Leagues, one UEFA Super Cup and two FIFA Club World Cups.

Player

Player may refer to:

Player may also refer to:

Computing

PFA Players' Player of the Year

The Professional Footballers' Association Players' Player of the Year (often called the PFA Players' Player of the Year, the Players' Player of the Year, or simply the Player of the Year) is an annual award given to the player who is adjudged to have been the best of the year in English football. The award has been presented since the 1973–74 season and the winner is chosen by a vote amongst the members of the players' trade union, the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA). The current holder is Eden Hazard, who won the award on 26 April 2015 for his displays throughout the 2014–15 season, representing Chelsea.

The first winner of the award was Leeds United defender Norman Hunter. As of 2013, only Mark Hughes, Alan Shearer, Thierry Henry, Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale have won the award on two occasions, and only Henry and Ronaldo have won the award in consecutive seasons. Of the five, only Shearer won his awards playing for two different teams. Although there is a separate PFA Young Player of the Year award for players under the age of 23, young players remain eligible to win the senior award, and on three occasions the same player has won both awards for a season, Andy Gray in 1976–77, Ronaldo in 2006–07 and Bale in 2012–13