Footballer of the Year (Germany)
award of a German organization of sports journalists

The title Footballer of the Year (German: Fußballer des Jahres) has been awarded in West Germany from 1960 to 1990 and Germany since 1991. Eligible are German players as well as non-German players playing in Germany.
In 1996, the title Women's Footballer of the Year (German: Fußballerin des Jahres) was awarded for the first time. Both awards are determined by a poll of German football journalists from the Association of German Sports Journalists (Verband Deutscher Sportjournalisten) and the publication kicker.
The current titleholders are Harry Kane of Bayern Munich and Giulia Gwinn of Bayern Munich. In 2004, Brazilian Aílton became the first foreign player to attain the honour.
Footballer of the Year
Women's Footballer of the Year
Footballer of the Year for East Germany
From 1963 to 1991, the publication Die Neue Fußballwoche awarded the Footballer of the Year for East Germany award.
“Footballer of the Year (Germany)” enters the record as award of a German organization of sports journalists. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Footballer, Year and Germany can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Footballer of the Year (Germany)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Footballer, Year and Germany provides the most credible route into that argument.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q311830. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1960, 1990, 1991 and 1996.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Footballer of the Year (Germany)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.