When you look back on a highlight reel of 2016, the usual suspects will feature prominently. Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi continued to raise the bar, Real Madrid and Barcelona dominated in Spain and Europe, while a Ronaldo-inspired Portugal claimed the European Championship.
But scratch a little below the surface and there are many unsung heroes, and as the year draws to a close, here are some of the names worthy of attention.
Pepe (Real Madrid/Portugal, defender)
OK, so he isn’t exactly the sort of player to keep a low profile, but just how important Pepe has been for club and country over the past 12 months has been understated. His 2016 may be remembered by many for the disdainful look he received from referee Mark Clattenburg in the Champions League final after he threw himself to the ground after contact with Atletico Madrid’s Yannick Carrasco (as this example in the Guardian reminds us).
The bottom line, though, is that he helped to make his team(s) winners. When Atleti pushed in the second half of the final in Milan, Pepe helped El Real to hold firm. He was similarly resolute in Portugal’s victorious European Championship run in France, missing just one game, and again as part of a team that concentrated on defending first. As his 34th birthday approaches apace (with his Madrid contract running down), Pepe’s poise and judgement make him still one of the best centre-backs of an era hardly overwhelmed with elite central defenders.
Niko Kovac (Eintracht Frankfurt, head coach)
When Kovac was appointed in March, there were hardly ticker-tape fanfares. He arrived with only one experience in a head coach’s role—an often-difficult spell in charge of Croatia, which ended after a miserable Euro 2016 qualifying defeat in Norway last September. Moreover he took the helm of an Eintracht side in free fall. They lost four of Kovac’s first five games in charge, and they looked doomed to relegation.
Three late wins got Kovac and company to the brink of safety, but a late goal conceded at basement rivals Werder Bremen on the final day condemned them to play a relegation play-off with Nurnberg. On the eve of the two-leg tie, it was announced that skipper Marco Russ was suffering from cancer.
Yet Kovac saw his side through. Remarkably (with Russ now on the mend), he has shaped a competitive side after little spending but with the benefit of a full pre-season. They stand fourth at the winter break and Kovac was recently rewarded with a contract extension through to 2019 (announced in enigmatic style by the club on Twitter).
Volkan Babacan (Istanbul Basaksehir, goalkeeper)
There has been much talk about the rise of the "Leicesters" in Europe, in a year when the likes of Rostov and Nice have led their domestic tables. In Turkey, Abdullah Avci’s Basaksehir go into the winter break top of the SuperLig—a point clear of reigning champions Besiktas—and unbeaten after the first 16 matches of the season.
The experienced Avci deserves great credit for his work, and one of the first arrivals after he took over in 2014 does too. Babacan was plucked from the second tier and has played his part in guiding the team to consecutive fourth-place finishes before this season. The continuity is key. If one includes the end of last season, Basaksehir are surfing a 25-match undefeated spell in the SuperLig.
Babacan—who replaced his namesake Volkan Demirel in the Turkey team—is central to this, having conceded a league-low 11 goals to date. An imposing presence with quick reactions, the Fenerbahce academy product could be set for his career’s crowning glory in 2017.
Jean-Pierre Rivere (Nice, president)
So onto the story of Nice, who amazed France with the verve of their football on the way to fourth spot last season. It was supposed to fall apart this campaign as Hatem Ben Arfa and coach Claude Puel left, with top scorer Valere Germain going back to his parent club Monaco.
It should perhaps have been the year that Rivere stepped aside too, as he sold 80 percent of his share capital to Chinese investors. Yet having remained as president, he’s come even further into his own. There was the stroke of genius in replacing Puel with the outstanding Lucien Favre, with the Swiss coach leading Nice to the title of "autumn champion." Then, he maintained media focus on the club by bringing in Mario Balotelli, and added top-class defensive experience with Dante.
With all the other improvements Rivere has made in his five years in charge—the move from the atmospheric but antiquated Stade du Ray to the Allianz Riviera and boosting the club’s academy—paying dividends, Nice’s future is bright whether they stay the title course or not. There’s no reason that they shouldn’t, either.
Dirk Kuyt (Feyenoord, forward)
It would have been easy (and equally as deserved) to choose a couple of others from Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s surprise Eredivisie leaders. Nicolai Jorgensen has rattled in 12 goals in the first half of the season and laid on another six since his summer arrival from Kobenhavn. Karim El Ahmadi, like Kuyt, has returned for a second spell at De Kuip and has been outstanding, making things tick in the middle of the park.
Yet Kuyt’s returning hero story is an alluring one. There was a sense of him coming back to muck in when he returned from Fenerbahce in 2015, with Feyenoord rebuilding under a newly appointed rookie coach in Van Bronckhorst. He did more than that, scoring 23 times as the team rode out some sticky patches (including a seven-match losing run in early 2016) to end the season as KNVB Beker winners. Maybe that would have been enough, but with Kuyt extending an initial one-year deal, Feyenoord are on the brink of something even bigger, going into 2017 five points clear at the top.
Eusebio Sacristan (Real Sociedad, head coach)
The former Barcelona midfielder has only been in his post for a touch more than a year, but he has made a huge impact at Anoeta already. There’s no doubting his pedigree after three-and-a-half years in charge of Barcelona B, but he was removed from his post in early 2015 after some bad results, and had been out of a job for nine months when La Real gave him the call.
Eusebio inherited a fairly unpromising situation from David Moyes last November too. The Basques were stuck in the bottom three with fewer points than games played, and they were a team with a real lack of identity.
The new coach changed all that, gradually imposing (perhaps unsurprisingly given his background) a possession-based style, authoring memorable wins over Barca and at rivals Athletic Bilbao and finishing in the top ten. The improvement has continued this time. La Real are fifth (level on points with Villarreal in fourth) and Eusebio has revitalised lost talents like Carlos Vela and Asier Illarramendi.
Kari Arnason (Malmo/Iceland, defender)
You could argue that the epithet "journeyman" was made for Arnason, but at 34, after spells at Plymouth, Aberdeen and Rotherham, he is enjoying an Indian summer in his mazy career. He kept Cristiano Ronaldo at bay as Iceland held eventual winners Portugal in their Euro 2016 opener at Saint Etienne. He put the Real Madrid star in his place after the game too (as reported here by the Mirror), just months after a Ronaldo-led Real Madrid had hammered his Malmo side 8-0 at the Bernabeu in the Champions League.
Straight afterwards, Arnason returned to captain Malmo to the Swedish title. Winning back the Allsvenskan was a real group effort, especially after top scorer—and Arnason’s international teammate—Vidar Orn Kjartansson joined Maccabi Tel Aviv in August after a prolific year. Their skipper was at the heart of it. Arnason only scored once during the season but it was a vital one, the opener in the win at defending champions Norrkoping, which gave Malmo a decisive advantage in the title race.