Fabio Cannavaro (top) was the glue that held the Italian national team together as it won its fourth World Cup in Germany. AP

By Mark Bechtel

There are plenty of valid reasons for naming someone Sportsman of the Year. Most of the candidates put forth have melded athletic accomplishment with achievement off the field. It is, after all, called Sportsman of the Year, so being a good sport can rightly be considered a prerequisite.

We as fans are fond of telling ourselves (and anyone who will listen to us wax poetically on the nature of competition) that the beauty of sports isn't in the winning and the losing. It's in watching finely tuned specimens who are capable of making things we can only dream of doing look routine. It's in seeing two combatants duke it out and then shake hands like gentlemen afterwards. It's in the seldom-used guy on the end of the bench who plays for the love of the game.

Which is BS.

Sure, those things are nice. But we watch sports -- I mean, we really watch sports -- because we want our team to win. Be nice if you can, guys, but win.

So this year, I'm picking Fabio Cannavaro, the captain of the Italian World Cup soccer team. Now before you get the wrong idea, Cannavaro isn't a bad guy. He's a nice man who does good things in his community. He doesn't headbutt people. He has never been accused, publicly at least, of harming any pets. But none of that has anything to do with why he's my choice. I'm picking him for one simple reason: On the biggest stage in the world, he was the best player. He won. Big time.

For reasons I still don't completely understand, Cannavaro wasn't even named the best player in the tournament. France's Zinédine Zidane was, though the votes were cast before he tried to embed his noggin in Marco Materazzi's chest. During the group stage, Zidane's form ranged from acceptable to putrid. He turned it on in the round of eight with an inspired showing against Brazil, when he comprehensively outplayed everyone on the pitch, most notably Ronaldinho.

Cannavaro, on the other hand, was a rock from the opening whistle. It's not easy to describe the play of a central defender in any way that will excite people. Cannavaro doesn't do any fancy dribbling and he never shoots (he's scored one goal in 105 games for Italy) -- in short, he's not SportsCenter material.

But watch him in person, when you can see the whole pitch and the way he commands it, and you begin to understand why he's regarded as the best defender in the world. He's never out of position. He anticipates plays so that he rarely has to make a flashy, last-gasp play; nine times out of ten, he's got things covered. And that one other time, he'll just swoop in and break up the play with a perfectly timed tackle. In Germany, the Cannavaro-led Italian defense allowed two goals: an own-goal against the U.S. and a soft penalty against France in the finals. That was it.

Cannavaro has played magnificent football for years, but he saved his best performance for the most important competition of his life. If you want some idea of how much pressure the World Cup generates, think of the Super Bowl and multiply it by 10. And this year there was a little added pressure on the Italians. A scandal back home in their domestic league involving allegations of match-fixing and influence-peddling threatened some of the country's top sides.

It was a full-blown crisis, and it was blowing up right in the middle of the Cup. The scandal left so many fans of the Azzurri bluer than usual. So they pegged their hopes on their national team, skippered by a 33-year-old whose club team was staring at the prospect of massive penalties.

For Cannavaro to shine with that many eyes on him -- with that many hopes on him -- makes him the Sportsman of the Year in my book.