Major Announcements for Bleacher Report's World Football Community

First of all, congratulations to Alex Dimond on winning the B/R World Football Community "Writer of the Year" Award.

Fortunately, the idea for the B/R World Football Community "Writer of the Year" Award has been appreciated and accepted by most of our community and thus the awards will become an annual fixture for the future.

Let's see if Alex can defend his title come the end of 2009.

My fellow Co-Community Leader, Andrew McNair, has suggested a series of ideas which are in the process of being considered.

The B/R World Football Community's Monthly Awards have been abolished!

Having said that, we have decided these awards will be staged four times a year.

These quarterly periods will be:

• JANUARY-MARCH
• APRIL-JUNE
• JULY-SEPTEMBER
• OCTOBER-DECEMBER

The format for these awards will be scrutinized extensively as certain awards will be snubbed and others might be added.

I've talked to Zander (related to the format of the World Football section) about this issue and the World Football Community Leaders (Andrew and myself) will soon jot out a plan for the awards which should hopefully be acceptable to all.

As suggested by Andrew, Zander will consider shirts amongst other B/R Merchandise as prizes for the winners but that is secondary. First we hope to solve the bigger problems which have divided our community into those for and against "the award system."

We do intend to involve the members of the World Football Community in the decision-making procedure, which is why we will consider all suggestions for the awards.

An open-ballot voting system is being considered but as Andrew suggested the bias might divide our community even further.

The closed "email" voting is another option that will certainly be considered.

Which brings us to the most important bit of this discussion—The World Football "Team and Player" Awards.

These awards will enable B/R members to select their best players in various categories.

Whether these awards are a monthly fixture or half-season fixture, will be up for discussion.

Alex Dimond earlier did a fantastic job with B/R European Football Power Rankings and it would be somewhat along the lines of that particular setup.

Michael and Sarah, I believe, have implemented this system in the F1 Community to great use and given the massive size of our community we will try to experiment with these ideas.

Basically, it will give you the chance of voting for Gianluigi Buffon as the best goalkeeper, and John Terry as the best centre-back.

That's a wrap for now!

Happy New Year and here's wishing all our members a successful and prosperous 2009!