FIFPro World XI Reflects Spanish Domination, but Prem Players Making Ground

The votes of more than 25,000 professional footballers across the globe are in, and their verdict is clear: Dear Premier League, you need step away from that slimming mirror.

After a year in which England's top division could have adopted the tagline of "bigger, louder, brasher," and in which TV interviewers and decent sections of a weirdly needy football media attempted to squeeze Pep Guardiola so tight that the words "the Premier League is the best, guys" would pop out of his squished larynx, Monday night might have come with a bit of a thud. 

In Zurich at FIFA's thoughtfully named "The Best" awards, the 2016 FIFPro World XI of the year was unveiled without a single Premier League representative. Unsurprisingly, it was dominated by Real Madrid with five representatives and Barcelona with another five of their own, sort of (Dani Alves left the Catalan club for Juventus in the summer). Bayern Munich's Manuel Neuer was thrown in for a bit of diversity. 

But it's not as though the Premier League isn't used to this by now. It didn't have a player in the 2015 team either, and only Manchester United's Angel Di Maria made it the year before, and that didn't have anything to do with what he did at Manchester United.

The years of 2013 and 2012 were just as barren for those plying their trade on English shores; you have to go back to 2011 when United's Nemanja Vidic got the nod to find a time when the Premier League got a player in the team who'd actually done some things in the Premier League. 

There is, of course, the matter of whether anyone takes these things seriously. According to FIFA.com, the FIFPro World XI is "by the players, for the players," which is a guarantee of little but repetition and sounds suspiciously like a rip-off of a certain bookmaker's advertising campaign. 

Every year when the ceremony rolls around, we're reminded that these awards are about voting for your pals. Cristiano Ronaldo voting in the Best Player category for three Real Madrid team-mates is one thing; Chile manager Juan Antonio Pizzi voting for Alexis Sanchez and not bothering to pick a second or third player is another again.

For an affair about accumulating allies, it can only be a matter of time before FIFA teams up with CBS to produce the whole thing Survivor style. 

Perhaps more than anything, though, the selection of the World XI is a yearly reminder for fans that many footballers don't watch a lot of football. Only they'll be able to explain how Sergio Ramos continues to get in year on year despite becoming more a caricature of himself with every passing month. 

That's not to say that Ramos doesn't have his qualities. He most definitely does, and this writer is quite fond of them in that entertaining way of theirs. But if you're voting for central defenders on their ability to, you know, defend, Ramos shouldn't be anywhere near it. 

To focus only on the flaws of the voting process, though, would be more than a little churlish. It would also be to miss a basic point.

In a period in which Spanish teams have won five of the last eight Champions League titles and five of the last seven in the Europa League—and that includes the last three in each—it's only natural that the FIFPro World XI continues to be dominated by La Liga's giants. 

In 2016, Real Madrid became an imperfect but unrelenting juggernaut under Zinedine Zidane. Titles in the form of the Champions League, UEFA Super Cup and Club World Cup arrived as Madrid closed the year on a 37-game unbeaten run. 

Barcelona weren't quite that good, but they did claim a domestic double. They also claimed it with Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar doing their thing—a thing that was sometimes sublime, and at others completely took the piss. A good dash of Andres Iniesta didn't hurt, either. 

Never before has European football had a concentration of talent quite like this. Having Ronaldo, Messi, Suarez, Neymar, Iniesta, Luka Modric, Toni Kroos, Marcelo, Gerard Pique, Sergio Busquets and Karim Benzema at two clubs is a bit like having every Michelin star restaurant in the world on a single street. 

For a while now, when it has come to raw talent, the Premier League has looked as though it's been dining at Five Guys in comparison. It might have been in front of the slimming mirror, but those jeans it's been trying on have still been 38s. 

Monday's reminder that the game's icons still elude it won't have sat all that nicely at Premier League HQ. It might have also dampened the noise from football's "Long live the Premier League" crowd that goes head-to-head daily with the "Viva La Liga" bunch. Still, both sides would likely recognise that while the FIFPro World XI didn't reflect it, Premier League players are making ground this season for the first time in years. 

Take a look around England right now: The nation's heavyweights are the most dominant they've been on these shores in several seasons, and perhaps never before have their squads been this stacked.

In 2016-17, there are no Leicester Citys upsetting the order and no West Ham Uniteds or Southamptons hanging around. There's a chasm between the top six and the rest, Leicester having delivered the mother of all wake-up calls, as noted by Bleacher Report's Alex Dunn: 

"

To put into context just how dominant the top six have been this season, they have accumulatively accrued 257 points. That's some 35 points up on last term. It's a tally that betters the top-six equivalents for the 2014/15 season by 25 points, 2013/14 by 11 points and 2012/13 by 26 points.

Prior to the weekend's FA Cup exertions, the current top six's combined form over the previous five games in the league is 24 wins, four losses and two draws from 30 matches. Of those losses and draws, only Liverpool's 2-2 draw with Sunderland, Arsenal's defeat to Everton and the Gunners' 3-3 draw at Bournemouth were not against fellow top-six sides.

"

The strength of the Premier League big guns has been helped by the arrival of a mega-cast of managers who've propelled the league onto a higher tactical plane.

Guardiola set the early pace with Manchester City, and Antonio Conte has done so more recently at Chelsea. Those teams' barnstorming runs have shifted expectations and changed one's point of comparison, dragging the others along with them in a furious sprint while squashing the rest like that aforementioned lot have done with Pep's larynx. 

The luring of some box-office names has played its part, too. Paul Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic have given the Premier League some of the swagger and stardust it has missed in recent years, and existing figures have embraced the heightened stakes. 

In response to Ibrahimovic's 13 league goals, Alexis has just as many and Diego Costa has one more. At current pace, each man could go close to the 30-barrier by season's end to challenge the likes of Suarez, Antoine Griezmann and Robert Lewandowski. And if Sergio Aguero (11 in only 12 starts) hadn't seemingly swapped personalities with Costa back in the summer, he'd probably have more than all of them. 

Elsewhere, you sense there are more members of a suddenly surging cast in the English top flight. Eden Hazard and Kevin De Bruyne can't be far from the pinnacle when it comes to the world's best attacking midfielders. Pogba and N'Golo Kante are knocking on the door in the more central category, and if Hector Bellerin and Danny Rose aren't recognised as two of the finest full-backs in Europe, it's only because they play in north London and not north-east Spain.  

Of course, part of the problem for Premier League players when it has come to awards has been their team's struggles in the Champions League. It hurts Aguero when City hand in limp displays in glamour ties. It's not helping Ibrahimovic and Pogba to play in the Europa League. Last season's collapse hinders Hazard and Costa in terms of awards now. No matter how hard he tries to change them, Alexis still has to deal with Arsenal being Arsenal. 

The Gunners and City (and Leicester) have the opportunity to change that in the months ahead. Though given they're two of the flakier lots among the league's establishment, you suspect a Premier League resurgence in Europe might still be a season away, when Chelsea return; when City are further down the line of Guardiola's revolution; when stronger versions of Liverpool or United could be back. 

For years there's been no sort of challenge from the Premier League contingent to La Liga's domination of the FIFPro World XI. Now, though, even if the selected 2016 team didn't show it, they're finally making ground.