The MacedonianFootball.com award for “Best Player” of the 2015/16 season goes to Juan Felipe Alves Ribeiro, also known as Juan Felipe.

This past weekend we announced the pick for best young player, today we introduce the best overall player of the Macedonian First League. Like for the award of the best young player, the requirement again was that each nominee had to start at least half of his team’s league games. That comes out to 16 games or more, since the league season consisted of 32/33 rounds (32 for the promotion play-off teams and 33 for the relegation play-off teams).

We discussed a lot about potential winners, there were also discussions on our forum. The outcome was that in Juan Felipe, Besart Ibraimi and Hovhannes Hambardzumyan there are three favorites. Ibraimi had the statistics on his side as he netted 26 goals and collected 16 assists. Right back Hambardzumyan (7 goals and 9 assists) also shined with effectiveness, especially in consideration of his position, while Juan Felipe (7 goals and 8 assists) had good numbers, but moreover seemed to be the brain in Vardar’s team. Considering all this, our choice for the best player of the 2015/16 season went to Juan Felipe. We felt that each of the above mentioned deserves the award, but in the end we had to pick one winner. Juan Felipe joined Vardar last summer and forthwith took over the control in Vardar’s team. Overall, he played an outstanding season and repeatedly demonstrated his class that is clearly above the league average, thus Juan Felipe rightfully gains the award.

Our choice for the best team of the season will be announced in the upcoming days.