I think that the list can actually top last year's list, the selection of candidates is not fundamentally bad or wrong.
There are the usual suspects who stay on the list until they die (Kissinger, Barker, van Dyke, Greenspan etc) which is ok.
There are good returnees (Woodward, Musharraf, Nolan, Turner) and good newcomers (Wagner, Harris, Sakamoto, Taylor).
My problem with the list is quite simply that it's a little boring.
The top 10 is almost static, there are hardly any big jumps or deep falls. Dick van Dyck could have dropped dramatically from 1 to 30 and would still have stayed on the list.
There could have been a new entry or a re-entry to first place.
The top 10 consists only of men; the first woman only comes in 15th place!
Where are the younger but really very sick candidates like Vialli, Whale or Irwin? It makes no sense to exclude such candidates, after all, the DL also wants to collect points and break their own records. As you can see, things went really well this year...
The whole list looks like it was put together by the so-called "white old men", with no desire for change or effort. And it probably was. It would be nice if something could change here in the future, so that both the selection of candidates and their placement are a bit more diverse, open and up-to-date.