The FIFPRO World XI is a largely pointless exercise to fluff out the fluff that is the Ballon D'ór ceremony. Having said that, we do love a good Best XI selection so we'll never argue to much about the existence of an official world selection. It's selected by FIFPRO, the player's union, and it's usually a fairly even mix of the best that Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich have to offer and this year is unlikely to be any different.
A 55 man longlist was announced today and there's no real surprise. The Premier League has less representatives on the list than both Real Madrid and Bayern which is no great surprise but that's not to say we're okay with the absence of a certain Stoke City player with a slight Scouse twang.
In goal, there's the usual suspects along with both Keylor Navas and Iker Casillas who is probably a bit fortunate to be included.
Real and Bayern also contribute the lion's share of defenders with John Terry and Vincent Kompany padding out the Premier League representation.
No surprise to see that Barca, Real and Bayern have a few representatives in midfield.
Then we come to the attackers and this is where the problems crop up. We're blaming this on FIFA because it's voted for by the players and they obviously can't get it wrong. As such, it's got to be an administrative problem on the part of FIFA.
Jon Walters, despite his heroic ball-holding up ability, has been disgustingly left out with Wayne Rooney somehow included instead. Carlos Tevez fecked off back to Boca so he should be disqualified for no other reason than we need to cut down the numbers, and Karim Benzema hasn't exactly covered himself in glory recently (just saying).
So, in summary, we await a correction from FIFA in the next few days. We're reasonable. We're not demanding he gets into the final XI but a quick mention is hardly too much to ask considering his Euro 2016 qualification form.
