On the morning of January 16, Messi defeated Haaland to become the owner of the world’s best male player award in 2023.

According to voting results announced from FIFA, Lionel Messi and Erling Haaland finished with equal scores (48), while Kylian Mbappe won 35 points.

According to article 12 of the voting rules, when two players have equal points, a secondary index will be taken into account, which is the votes from national team captains around the world.

Messi won thanks to being voted number one by 107 national team captains, while Haaland was only voted number one by 64 captains.

This is also the first time in the history of The Best award that FIFA has had to use secondary indexes to determine the winner.

Messi surprisingly won The Best award.

This is the third time Messi has won The Best award, the previous two times were in 2019 and 2022.

Gala 2023 is also the first time in history that the winner will not be present to receive the award.

Messi was busy with personal matters, or maybe he didn’t expect to win so he didn’t go to the award ceremony venue in Switzerland.

Unlike France Football’s Golden Ball, The Best will be elected based on votes from coaches, national team captains, a number of journalists from federations, media units and votes from fan. Each group of votes will have equal weight.

Voting starts from September 14, 2023 to October 6, 2023. In addition, the player’s performance will also be counted from December 19, 2022 to August 20, 2023.

During the above period, Messi scored 26 goals, assisted 12 times, won the Ligue 1 championship with PSG, then continued to lift the League Cup championship trophy with Inter Miami.

Regarding individual awards, Messi won the King of Assists award in Ligue 1 last season and was the best player in the North-Central American Federation Cup.

In addition to The Best award, Messi also created another record, that is, appearing in the most outstanding team of the year in history (17 times in a row), surpassing the achievement of Cristiano Ronaldo (15 times).

Typical squad of 2023. Photo: FIFPro.

In the category of best men’s team coach, Pep Guardiola was honored for leading Man City to a historic treble.

Meanwhile, the best goalkeeper award cannot escape the hands of Ederson – the number one “keeper” of the blue half of Manchester.