Arsenal’s Samir Nasri Wins French Footballer Of The Year (Because South Africa Never Happened)

While former coach Raymond Domenech was widely criticized for not selecting Nasri, this award still seems like overcompensation for what happened this summer. It’s an attempt to overlook history, electing not to rewrite it, just in case the narrative becomes useful in the future. Today, all is well within the FFF. There is no need to crack a whip, so we’ll forget about the World Cup. Nasri wins the award! It’s as if June and July never happened. The year 2010 only had ten months.

But as is always the case when somebody is unduly elevated, the image of that person on a pedestal compels us to note why he should not be there. Nasri has been great over the last month, but before that he was “merely” very good. Has he been better than Florent Malouda for most of this calendar year? Somebody whose emergence for Chelsea was key to their Premier League title? Who led the Premier League in goals for the first part of the season?