© EuroFootball.com
On Monday, the official UEFA website announced the "Team of the Year 2005", which was chosen by more than 1.5 million visitors.
This year's team, compared to 2004, only retained four players, and for the third consecutive year, the coach of the year was the Portuguese Jose Mourinho, the strategist of London's Chelsea.
For the second consecutive year, the best right-back was the 35-year-old Brazilian Cafu, representing the Milan club, also among the best were Juventus defender Pavel Nedved, the best player in the world, Brazilian Ronaldinho, and Milan striker Andriy Shevchenko.
Since the first selections in 2001, London's Arsenal attacking leader Thierry Henry had no luck to be included in any "Team of the Year" until now, missing only a thousand or just less than 0.4 percent of the votes.
London's Chelsea (two players and coach), Barcelona, and Milan each have three representatives in this year's team. Two players represent the European champions Liverpool, and Turin's Juventus has one representative. For the second consecutive year, Real Madrid has no representatives among the best, despite having three representatives in the 2003 team.
The easiest spot in the "Team of the Year" was secured by the Barcelona star Ronaldinho, who received votes from 72 percent of the voters, while fierce competition took place among coaches and left-backs - J.Mourinho's colleague from Liverpool Rafa Benitez received 1.5 percent more votes than P.Nedved's one percent more votes than Arjen Robben.
Team of the Year: Goalkeeper: Petr Cech (Chelsea, Czech Republic) Right-back: Cafu (Milan, Brazil) Center-back: John Terry (Chelsea, England) Center-back: Carles Puyol (Barcelona, Spain) Left-back: Paolo Maldini (Milan, Italy) Right midfielder: Luis Garcia (Liverpool, Spain) Midfielder: Steven Gerrard (Liverpool, England) Left midfielder: Pavel Nedved (Juventus, Czech Republic) Attacking midfielder: Ronaldinho (Barcelona, Brazil) Forward: Samuel Eto'o (Barcelona, Cameroon) Forward: Andriy Shevchenko (Milan, Ukraine) Coach: Jose Mourinho (Chelsea), Portugal
