Verón Chosen As South American Player of the Year

Juan Sebastián Verón might have called an end to the Euro­pean leg of his illus­tri­ous career a few years back, but he’s qual­ity has not dimin­ished one bit.   One the eve of 2009, the for­mer Sam­p­do­ria, Parma, Lazio, and Inter star was cho­sen as the South Amer­i­can Player of the Year by the Uruguayan daily El País.

Verón beat national team part­ner and for­mer Vil­lar­real play­maker Juan Román Riquelme by three votes.  Riquelme comes off a very impres­sive sec­ond half of the year where his team won the Aper­tura tour­na­ment and the South Amer­i­can Recopa. He also won the Olympic gold medal with Argentina in Bei­jing.

Verón also beat last year’s win­ner, Amer­ica (MEX) striker and Paraguayan inter­na­tional, Sal­vador Cabañas by 19.  Another Argen­tine, Andrés D’Alessandro came out in fourth place despite lead­ing Inter to the Copa Sudamer­i­cana title.

Liga de Quito goal­keeper José Ceval­los, who was the hero in this year’s Copa Lib­er­ta­dores rounded out the top five.   Ceval­los was instru­men­tal in the Ecuado­rian side’s first-ever inter­na­tional title when he stopped three penal­ties in the tour­na­ment final against Brazil­ian side Fluminense.

Verón’s selec­tion was con­tro­ver­sial.  Despite lead­ing Estu­di­antes to the final of the Copa Sudamer­i­cana, he did not win any titles as com­pared to some of the play­ers that ened up behind him in the results.  Verón was one of the biggest stars in his seven years in Serie A.  He made the leap to Europe after Sam­p­do­ria paid Boca Juniors and was sold to Parma the fol­low­ing sea­son where he would team up with play­ers like Fabio Can­navaro, Lil­ian Thu­ram, Gian­luigi Buf­fon, and Hernán Cre­spo.  He would win the UEFA Cup and and Coppa Italia dou­ble in 1999.

The fol­low­ing sea­son he would play in Rome for Lazio and his streak of suc­cess con­tin­ued as he would with a domes­tic tre­ble (Scud­etto, Coppa Italia, Ital­ian Super Cup) in the 1999–2000 season.

After an unsuc­cess­ful stay in Eng­land and a time where he was the scape­goat for Argentina’s dis­as­trous World Cup run in 2002, he returned to Italy.  Inter Milan put him back on top of the foot­ball scene there as he “won” two more Scud­et­tos and two Coppa Italias.