Rivalry is the life of trade as quite often proved by the veterans after Lionel Messi won the FIFA Best Award despite Cristiano Ronaldo didn’t participate in voting for Portugal.
Lionel Messi, The Best FIFA Award 2022 ⭐️🇦🇷✨ #TheBestAwards #Messi pic.twitter.com/WBUbyBynJY
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) February 27, 2023
Messi bagged the trophy for the second time in his career after previously winning the prize in 2019 as he leveled with the Portuguese sensation who won the Award back in 2016 and 2017.
Messi got the maximum vote and eased past the other two finalists: Kylian Mbappe and Karim Benzema and take the trophy back to his trophy cabinet but Cristiano Ronaldo didn’t vote for the Argentine.
Here's why Leo Messi won "FIFA The Best" 🎧pic.twitter.com/exOZtFyXYA
— Jan (@FutbolJan10) February 28, 2023
Captain and manager of each playing nation under FIFA are eligible to vote for this Award and Cristiano Ronaldo is the most prolific player of his nation and captained the side a mammoth 136 times.
However, Pepe emerged as the one who gave the captain’s vote and Ronaldo’s fellow Real Madrid teammates voted for Mbappe, Luka Modric, and Karim Benzema.
Interestingly, Portugal appointed Roberto Martinez as their new manager and the former Belgian manager has voted for Messi, De Bruyne, and Mbappe in the order of picking.
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Cristiano Ronaldo did not vote for FIFA The Best. Pepe did it instead.
[FIFA’s website] pic.twitter.com/jrqjBdXcRc
— TCR. (@TeamCRonaldo) February 28, 2023
The result couldn’t change that much following Ronaldo’s omission from the voting and as per the results, Messi had a way mile lead over everyone in that list as winning the Best Player this year was not anything shocking for anybody.
Lionel Messi is Argentina’s captain and leader as the seven-time Ballon d’Or winner has given his three votes to his fellow teammates Neymar and Mbappe while Real Madrid’s Karim Benzema received the final vote.
Ronaldo was not among the 26-shortlist announced earlier by FIFA as the Portuguese had a terrible season went with Manchester United which made him shift to Saudi Arabia and received zero votes.
The moment Cristiano Ronaldo hit his first-half hat trick 😤
(via @SPL) pic.twitter.com/ABEln7X6q7
— B/R Football (@brfootball) February 25, 2023
Messi and PSG will be eyeing to pull off a comeback against Bayern Munich as the Portuguese Ronaldo will be smashing hat-tricks after hat-tricks in the middle east for his Saudi club Al Nasr FC.
