Another year-end review! This series is fun, isn’t it? The time for evaluation is now—end of the year—almost every firm in the world does a calendar year review. While Sports Courant might not be a firm, we still do the year-end review of footballers around the globe, which constitutes of Europe exclusively in this regard.
Attack, they say, wins you games while defence wins you championships. The sad part is that it is mainly the attackers who are in the spotlight for the things that they do. Scoring goals is the most crucial part, but saving goals holds an equal place as well.
So without further ado, here were the top 5 defenders from 2017.
3Nicolas Otamendi
At one point in time, Otamendi was on his way out of the club—at least that is what many thought. He wasn’t as reliable as he displayed during his Valencia days and the fans thought that he might be another one of Pellegrini’s failed musings.
Enter Pep Guardiola.
Ever since the Catalan’s entry to the Etihad, Otamendi has been a completely different player—a beast—who Guardiola rates as the best player in the team.
“Everybody speaks about a lot of players, like Raheem, like Kevin, like David, like Sergio, and they deserve it, but if I would like to point to some player who deserves all the respect for what we have done until now, it’s Nico.”
Big praise from the big man!
