El Tri

Tomorrow FIFA will announce the 2010 Ballon D'Or winner - they've muscled in on France Football's annual award recognising the best player in the world over the past 12 months.

In what I believe to be a first, the final three shortlisted candidates all play for the same club. Who else but those purveyors of Catalan Footballing Perfection or CFP as it isn't known: FC Barcelona.

Last year Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta and Lionel Messi formed three of the top 4 - with the excellent if opinion-dividing Cristiano Ronaldo splitting them. This year Madrid's talisman has missed out on the cut leaving all the trophies to be put on display in the already well stocked Camp Nou Trophy Room.

All three are clearly worthy of winning the award.

Messi is the best player in the world, for me there is no argument on this. He is constantly making the game look ridiculously easy and moreover playing it in a way that appeals to the spectator and sets an example to those wishing to learn the game.

Xavi is the fulcrum of quite possibly the best club team of my lifetime - with perhaps only Galactico Madrid, Treble winning United and Invincible Arsenal as challengers to that title. His stats usually show that he alone makes as many passes in a match as the entire opposition team combined. His vision, patience, work-rate and creativity allow so much of the flowing football that Barca produce to be possible in the first place. He would deserve this award, no doubt.

Iniesta, last but not least, is the player who I think will get the award, clinching it due to the fact that it was he who smashed the ball past Stekelenburg with only minutes remaining in Extra Time, to win Spain their first ever World Cup. Such a high profile moment for a player already regarded as one of the world's absolute elite may well be that which sticks in the minds of those voting this year.

I think Iniesta will win, but I would probably want Messi to win it of all three. To repeat: he is the best player in the world. Furthermore, he is possibly further ahead in holding this status than almost any other player that I have seen over the past twenty years - there has always been a solid argument for 3/4 players, right now I think it would be hard to find anyone that did not concede that Leo is number 1.

Having said that, with such an outstanding top three the decision will be a fair and justifiable one whoever wins (presumably a novel experience for the FIFA execs involved).

Whatever happens, the biggest winners here are FC Barcelona. Not that they needed any right now, but the folks over at the Bernabeu must be taking this news as another painful reminder of precisely who is ruling the Spanish roost these days.

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I've just seen the confirmation that Alan Pardew, former Saints manager, is now boss at Newcastle. Not getting into that one as such, but one thing leapt out...they've given him a FIVE AND A HALF YEAR contract. That is just insanity. He was out of work and surely, given the chance to manage a relatively big club in the Premier League, would have been happy to sign for 1-2 years. They say who would be a manager...Me. That's who. 5 and a half years!! Unbelievable. The big top seemed to be taken down around St James' for a while, but make no mistake, the fat ringleader is back in the spotlight and he seems determined to run the best damn circus in all of footballdom.