Chelsea’s N’Golo Kante deserves his Footballer of the Year prize, writes Football Writers’ Association member Adam Bate.
Eden Hazard would have been a worthy winner. His skills so often brought the breakthrough for Chelsea this past season. But it was a team effort really; a triumph of squad and system. Diego Costa scored the most goals, Pedro produced perhaps the one that mattered most. The wing-backs raided and even Cesc Fabregas made a difference despite limited minutes.
If there was one conspicuous difference between the Chelsea line-up that delivered the Premier League's worst title defence and the one that looked so reinvigorated this year it came in the shape of the little man in midfield. The Football Writers' Association's award goes to the player who 'by precept and example' is the Footballer of the Year.
That man is N'Golo Kante.
He had a strong case last season, the drummer keeping the beat while frontmen Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez took the adulation of the crowd. Overlooking him twice would have been careless. After all, Kante is on the verge of becoming the first player in the Premier League era to win the title in back-to-back seasons with different clubs. No, Mark Schwarzer does not count.
Anyone arguing that correlation does not equal causation has not been paying attention. It was Kante's energy, his relentless drive and underrated savvy for sniffing out where the ball would turn up next that helped Chelsea come up with the run of results that won the league - a sequence of wins in which they kept an extraordinary 10 clean sheets in 12 matches.
Kante not only performed brilliantly during that period but it was his near-unique skill-set that allowed Antonio Conte to switch to 3-4-3 in the first place. Fabregas, for all his quality, could not have pulled it off. And so, just as Danny Drinkwater got to operate with Kante either side of him, Nemanja Matic found himself playing in his own 'three-man' midfield.
In short, Hazard was the beneficiary of the tactical tweak but Kante was the facilitator of it.
The least skilful player to win the award? Not quite. There's a long tradition of solid citizens getting the nod - through the first 30 years of the award's existence there were more full-back winners of the prize than strikers. And while mercurial talents such as David Ginola have been celebrated since, Kante has traits of his own that are worth appreciating too.
Indeed, there is something bewitching in its own way about watching unbridled enthusiasm; a player who simply does not stop working; someone who is as bold on the pitch as he is bashful on it; the man with the Rolls Royce engine who drives to training in a second-hand Mini Cooper. Humility coupled with success is a combination to admire in any age.
The 'Kante facts' phenomenon has found as much favour among neutrals as it has fans of Chelsea and Leicester. An indication, perhaps, that while he is neither the highest-paid player nor the most technically gifted, he might be the most enjoyable. An important player. An inspiration. And a winner of substance.
In that sense, N'Golo Kante gets everyone's vote.