Portuguese player Cristiano Ronaldo was voted as the best football player of 2014 for the second year in a row. The results of the survey, carried out by Uruguay’s El Pais daily showed 89 of the 144 reporters queried named the Real Madrid forward as the region’s top player. German goalie Manuel Neuer (Bayern Munich) and Argentina’s Lionel Messi (Barcelona) came in distant second and third places, with 19 and 16 votes, respectively. Ronaldo “was again the grand star (of Real Madrid), winning the coveted Champions League title for the tenth time,” the daily said. In other categories, the title of Europe’s best coach went to Argentina’s Diego Simeone, who coached Atletico Madrid to victory in the Spanish 2013-2014 season and the final of the UEFA Champions League. Simeone, who garnered 68 votes, is the first non-European coach to win the prize since the survey was first carried out in 1991.
