The Best: the Fifa football awards that also sound like a ready meal

The wonderful world of football hadn’t held a big pointless awards ceremony for 49 days. That’s seven long weeks since the stilted vacuity of the Ballon d’Or, and the best part of two months without any of us having to go along with the patently absurd premise that Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are the same players they were in 2011. The sweet gaslight-free relief couldn’t last, though, and last night Fifa staged their The Best awards, the most prestigious of all the football awards that also sound like a premium ready meal. Can you taste the difference?

No, not really. Alexia Putellas won the women’s prize, while Robert Lewandowski scooped the men’s version, just as they both did at the tail end of November in that other one. The latter proved to be something of an awkward outcome, as Ronaldo was also in attendance at the Zurich ceremony, but didn’t even make the shortlist. Something had to be done, so he was given a special gong, the Fifa Asda Extra Special Award For Surpassing Ali Daei’s Long-Standing 109-Goal Men’s International Record For Iran. Number one in a field of one. The Finest.

Ronaldo described his bulbous silver consolation prize as “bling bling”, an aesthetic judgment that can be viewed either through the prism of his rather fetching bebop turtleneck sweater, or the double-breasted jacket that Jacob Rees-Mogg might think twice about wearing at the dispatch box, but not both. He also took the opportunity to announce his hope to play for “four or five years”, though the 36-year-old stroller at least had the good grace not to append “at the top level” to the statement, which would have further raised questions/encouraged cheap jokes about his immediate Old Trafford future, while pushing the concept of