CloseBill Connelly is a writer for ESPN. He covers college football, soccer and tennis. He has been at ESPN since 2019.
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They could have been named the Juan Cuadrado Awards, or the Fran Kirby All-Stars. There were plenty of worthy names out there.
Back in the 2020-21 season, we wanted to celebrate a group of Premier League players who were defying age to some degree -- players nearing the end of (or having already zoomed far past) their respective primes, but still accumulating skills and finding new heights to which they could raise their game. Yet we settled on the "Gundogan Awards" -- and expanded it beyond England's top division -- in honor of a player who was going to a particularly unique place.
Manchester City was in another one of its midseason, "Pep Guardiola homes in on the recipe that will win him another Premier League title" periods, and suddenly Ilkay Gundogan had gone from "ultra-steady midfielder" to "best goal scorer on the planet." From mid-December to mid-February, the 30-year-old scored 11 goals in 15 matches, and in those 15 matches, City dropped all of two points and took total charge of the league race.
Gundogan would score three more goals in March and once in May as City's more customary scorers got healthy and found their form. But his surge was one of the defining periods of a season that featured a domestic double and finished a single goal shy of City's long-sought treble.
Now, City have won their long-awaited Treble -- Premier League title, FA Cup title, Champions League title -- and they did so with Gundogan again doing increasingly impressive things. He recorded three braces in his final seven matches and scored one of the most purely awesome goals you'll ever see in the opening seconds of the FA Cup final on June 3.
THAT'S UNBELIEVABLE