LAUSANNE: Harmanpreet Singh, a defender and vice-captain for the Indian men's hockey team, has been voted as the FIH Player of the Year for the second consecutive year.
The 26-year-old, who has a penchant for being in the right position at the right time, won the prize for his goal-scoring prowess, which has improved this past year as numerous teams have found it difficult to stop his penalty-corner drag flicks.
In the Pro League in 2021–2022, he scored an astounding 18 goals from 16 games, including two hat tricks. With those 18 goals, he finished the season as India's leading scorer and now owns the Pro League record for most goals scored by a player in a single season.
At the Asian Champions Trophy in Dhaka in 2021, Harmanpreet was also in excellent form, scoring eight goals in six games while leading India to a podium position. His efforts also helped the Indian team win silver in the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022.
Harmanpreet now joins an elite group that includes Teun De Nooijer (Netherlands), Jamie Dwyer (Australia), and Arthur van Doren as the fourth player to win the Player of the Year title (men's category) in consecutive years (Belgium).
Tom Boon and Thierry Brinkmann were second and third, with 23.6 and 23.4 points, respectively, behind Harmanpreet, who had a total score of 29.4 points. In the women's division, Felice Albers of the Netherlands has been awarded the FIH Player of the Year 2021/22.
Felice's trophy case is already overflowing at the age of 22. In the Pro League (2019 and 2020/21), the Euro Hockey Championship (2021), the Tokyo Olympics, and the Women's World Cup (2022), the Dutch squad won gold throughout her time on the team.
Felice made her debut for the Dutch national team in 2019 after putting on standout performances at the youth level where she alternated between attacking and midfield. She has primarily played as an attacking midfielder since making her senior squad debut, forming the core of the attack and contributing significantly to their offensive creativity. With 16 goals in 32 international games to date, she also presents a significant goal-scoring threat to the opposition. Spain and the Netherlands hosted the Women's World Cup in 2022, where the Netherlands won the gold medal for the third time in a row. The Netherlands scored 42 goals in 16 games during the Pro League 2021/22 and 17 goals in six games during that tournament. Felice, the team's offensive creator-in-chief, significantly contributed to the offensive output of the Dutch team.
With this victory, she surpasses Germany's Natascha Keller (1999) as the youngest recipient of the FIH Player of the Year award (women's category) and ranks second among all winners since the awards' inception in 1998. Her final score of 29.1 points was just enough to beat Maria Granatto's (26.7 points) total in one of the tightest contests of the FIH Hockey Stars Awards 2021–22. With 16.4 points, Agustina Gorzelany came in third place.
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