The Premier League Player of the Season is an annual

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

award presented to

players Players may refer to: Art, entertainment, and media * ''Players'' (1979 film), a film starring Ali MacGraw * ''Players'' (2012 film), a Bollywood film * ''Players'' (Dicks novel), a novel by Terrance Dicks, based on the television series ''Doc ...

in England, which recognises the most outstanding player in the

Premier League The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Fo ...

each season. The recipient is chosen by a panel assembled by the league's sponsors consisting of members of "football's governing bodies, the media and fans", and is announced in the second or third week of May. For sponsorship purposes, from 1994 to 2001 it was called the Carling Player of the Year; from 2001 to 2004 as the

Barclaycard Barclaycard (; stylized as barclaycard) is a brand for credit cards of Barclays PLC. , Barclays had over ten million customers in the United Kingdom. History Barclays launched Barclaycard on 29 June 1966, initially as a charge card, but followi ...

Player of the Year; and from 2004 to 2016 as the

Barclays Barclays () is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services. Barclays traces ...

Player of the Season. Since the 2016–17 season, it is called the

EA Sports EA Sports is a division of Electronic Arts that develops and publishes sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they tried to imitate real-life sports networks by calling themselves the "EA Sports Network ...

Player of the Season. The Premier League was founded in 1992, when the clubs of the First Division left the

Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional association football, football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in Association football around the wor ...

and established a new commercially independent league that negotiated its own broadcast and sponsorship agreements. The newly formed league had no sponsor for its inaugural season until Carling agreed to a four-year £12 million deal that started the following season. That same season, Carling introduced individual awards for players, such as the Golden Boot. However, the Player of the Month and Player of the Season awards were only first bestowed during the 1994–95 season. The first Player of the Season award was given to

Blackburn Rovers Blackburn Rovers Football Club is a professional football club, based in Blackburn, Lancashire, England, which competes in the , the second tier of the English football league system. They have played home matches at Ewood Park since 1890. Th ...

striker

Alan Shearer Alan Shearer CBE DL (born 13 August 1970) is an English football pundit and retired football player and manager who played as a striker. Widely regarded as one of the best strikers of his generation and one of the greatest players in Premi ...

, who won the Premier League title with his team and the Golden Boot that season.

Thierry Henry Thierry Daniel Henry (born 17 August 1977) is a French professional football coach, pundit, and former player who is an assistant coach for the Belgium national team. Considered one of the best strikers of all time and one of the best player ...

Cristiano Ronaldo Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro (; born 5 February 1985) is a Portuguese professional footballer who plays as a forward and captains the Portugal national team. He is currently a free agent. Widely regarded as one of the greatest pl ...

Nemanja Vidić Nemanja Vidić ( sr-Cyrl, Немања Видић, ; born 21 October 1981) is a Serbian former professional footballer who played as a centre-back. He is best known for his time at Manchester United, was part of the Serbia national team, and ...

and Kevin De Bruyne have been Player of the Season on two occasions each and are the only players to have won the award more than once, with Ronaldo having achieved this in consecutive years (2007 and 2008). Eight players were the Premier League's leading goalscorer and won the Golden Boot alongside the Player of the Season award. Four of these players – Kevin Phillips, Henry, Ronaldo and

Luis Suárez Luis Alberto Suárez Díaz (; born 24 January 1987) is a Uruguayan professional footballer who plays as a striker for Uruguayan Primera División club Nacional and the Uruguay national team. Nicknamed ''El Pistolero'' ('The Gunman'), he is ...

– went on to win the

European Golden Shoe The European Golden Shoe, also known as European Golden Boot, is an award that is presented each season to the leading goalscorer in league matches from the top division of a European national league. The trophy is a sculpture of a football boot. ...

in the same season. 11 players have won the Premier League trophy with their respective clubs in the same year they received the award, with Ronaldo and Vidić each accomplishing the feat on two occasions with

Manchester United Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...

. Ronaldo is the only player to be named Player of the Season and win the

FIFA World Player of the Year The FIFA World Player of the Year was an association football award presented annually by the sport's governing body, FIFA, between 1991 and 2015 at the FIFA World Player Gala. Coaches and captains of international teams and media representati ...

; when he accomplished this in 2008, he became the first player from the Premier League to be voted the world's top footballer.

Winners

Awards won by nationality

Awards won by position

Awards won by club

Notes

References

General * * Specific {{National Footballer of the Year

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

Annual events in England Annual sporting events in the United Kingdom Awards established in 1995

Season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and ...