Amongst all the end of year awards announced in the last week, FIFPro have selected their team of the year for 2013 and it is: Manuel Neuer; Dani Alves, Thiago Silva, Sergio Ramos, Philipp Lahm; Andres Iniesta, Xavi, Franck Ribery; Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Naturally the reaction in the British press has been to question the lack of Premier League players in the team, but that is just a reflection of the poor performance of English teams in the Champions League compared to previous years. What is more noteworthy, though, is that the selection reflects an accepted wisdom of previous years with regard to the dominance of La Liga and Spain's Golden Generation. In a year in which Barcelona were thoroughly outplayed by Bayern Munich across two legs in the Champions League and Spain well beaten in the Confederations Cup Final, should we still be considering the Xavi-Iniesta midfield axis to be the best of them all? This list considers an alternative 11 drawn from the FIFPro shortlist to explore some choice performers of 2013 that have been overlooked in favour of the more obvious choices. According to the votes counted by FIFA, the reserve line-up of players closest to making the team was: Iker Casillas; David Luiz, Gerard Pique, Marcelo, David Alaba; Mesut Ozil, Yaya Toure, Gareth Bale; Neymar, Radamel Falcao, Robin van Persie. Some of these have made our list, while others have missed out. Let us know in the comments if you think this alternative 11 would stand a chance against the FIFPro team or if you think of a player glaringly ignored in both.
