FIFA Ballon d’Or 2015 awards: Live coverage and results

Carli Lloyd has won the FIFA women’s Ballon d’Or award as the best player in 2015, beating out Celia Sasic and Aya Miyama. Lloyd scored in each of the United States’ final three World Cup games, including a hat trick in the World Cup final.

Voting on the Ballon d’Or in World Cup years can often be controversial. It hasn’t affected the men’s game in recent years, with Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi holding off players who out-performed them in World Cups, but the 2002 and 2006 awards went to the top players at those World Cups, Ronaldo and Fabio Cannavaro. In 2007, 2011 and now 2015, the World Cup golden ball winner has been the same person as the women’s world player of the year award recipient.

Did you think Lionel Messi would win the FIFA goal of the year? Or that Barcelona haters would give the award to Alessandro Florenzi for scoring against the Blaugrana? Well, those two votes might have cancelled each other out somehow, because Brazilian second-division player Wendell Lira has won for this bicycle kick.

This award regularly has numerous nominees from outside of the top professional ranks, but is generally won by a top player. Miroslav Stoch and Hamit Altintop are the most unconventional past winners, but both are full internationals and won with goals from major competitions. The other previous winners are some of the biggest stars in the sport -- James Rodriguez, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo.

By winning all of La Liga, the Copa del Rey and the UEFA Champions League, Barcelona became the first team to ever repeat a treble. Manchester United, Inter Milan and Bayern Munich had won three major competitions in a season before -- as had Barcelona, under Pep Guardiola -- but the Blaugrana are now the only team to pull off the feat on two occasions.

Some might say it’s easy to win trophies with the talent Barca has at their disposal, but it took some serious work for Enrique to get his three star forwards working well together and contributing to defensive work as well. And they’re doing just as well so far this season -- they’re second in the La Liga table with a match in hand, while still in Copa del Rey and the Champions League.

In 2014, the United States women’s national team made a shocking managerial change, firing Tom Sermanni and hiring Jill Ellis just over a year before the World Cup. That change ended up paying off, with Ellis guiding the USWNT to their first World Cup title since 1999. And in winning that honor, Ellis also coached her way to a FIFA world coach of the year award for women’s soccer.

Ellis has been a fixture on the American coaching scene for decades, starting her career as an assistant in college in 1988. She got her first head coaching job in 1997 and guided UCLA to six consecutive conference titles as their head coach in the 2000s. Thanks to her success at the college level, Ellis was the coach of the Under-20 and Under-21 teams on multiple occasions, as well as an assistant to the senior team.

The FIFPro World XI of the year is, as usual, littered with Barcelona and Real Madrid players. But a few other teams managed to sneak players in this season -- Bayern Munich, PSG and Juventus all got one each.

We applaud FIFPro voters for putting together a World XI that could actually beat most above-average club teams. Usually, this team is made up of whatever 11 random players the voters liked, with very little consideration given to positions. That was probably the case this year too, but it just happened to work out that they voted for a left back, a right back, two center backs and a couple of midfielders that occasionally play some defense.