Today marks exactly three weeks until the footballing world turns its attention to Zurich, as the curtain rises on The Best FIFA Football Awards™ ceremony. This milestone provides an ideal opportunity for FIFA.com to start the week by focusing on this year’s nominees for The Best FIFA Women’s Player Award.

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** different continents are represented in the running for The Best Women’s Player Award. Europe, North and South America make up this year’s podium, through Germany’s Melanie Behringer, USA’s Carli Lloyd and Brazil’s Marta, respectively. In fact, the previous three editions of the FIFA Women’s World Player of the Year have seen three different continents represented in the final shortlist, with Lloyd, Celia Sasic and Aya Miyama making up last year’s podium.

In 2016, Lloyd scored goals against teams from five of the six confederations for USA, missing out only CAF, although – in fairness – the Stars and Stripes did not play against an African side this year. Marta, on the other hand, scored on three different continents this year for Brazil, in Europe, North and South America – the latter, for the host nation at Rio 2016. While all of Behringer’s goals this year for Germany came at the Women’s Olympic Football Tournament, her five goals came at four different stadiums, hundreds of miles apart across the vast expanse of Brazil.