Every honest football lover would admit that Lionel Messi’s victory at The FIFA Best Awards 2023 made a mockery of football once again. It is obvious that as far as 2022/2023 season is concerned, there are more than two people who deserve the award ahead of him.
It is yet another example of the fact that the most popular choice is not always right. Of all the top individual honours Messi has won over the years, the men’s Player of the Year prize at the FIFA Best Awards is perhaps the most undeserving. The Argentine superstar bagged the Best Male Player award for the third time since its inception in 2016, after doing so in 2019 and 2022. While his previous two awards were undoubtedly his to win, the 2023 award was not.
Messi edged past Erling Haaland (Manchester City/Norway) and Kylian Mbappe (Paris Saint-Germain/France) to collect the top honour in London, where none of the three nominees were present at the ceremony. Messi won the award by the tightest of margins. He and Haaland finished on the same amount of points but Messi edged the Norwegian based on more first-place nominations from national team captains.
A combination of votes from national team coaches and captains, journalists and fans on FIFA’s website – with each amounting to 25 per cent – were used to decide the winners.
Heartbreak for Haaland again
It’s hard to fathom how Haaland missed out on winning his maiden FIFA top honour. He won everything that was there to be won with Manchester City, enjoyed a remarkable goal-scoring season in the Premier League, broke a plethora of records and set plenty of his own. Haaland scored a record 36 league goals last season and netted a club-record 52 goals in all competitions in the 2022-23 season.
Between December 19, 2022, and August 20, 2023 – the period the awards were based on — Haaland netted a whopping 30 goals. He won a historic treble of the Premier League, FA Cup and UEFA Champions League to cap off an astonishing season. What more could have he done to win the top honour at FIFA Best Awards 2023! His record-breaking season will probably never be beaten.
In the same period, Messi scored nine goals for PSG and won the French Ligue 1 title and later netted 10 goals in seven games with his new club Inter Miami and clinched the inaugural Leagues Cup in the United States.
The big question to be asked here is:
How can a player win the top honour for scoring goals in the MLS over someone netting goals for fun in the most competitive league in the world and winning the treble in the process?
It wouldn’t be out of place to say the FIFA Best Awards has lost its credibility after robbing Haaland of the Best Male Player award.
The never-ending obsession with Messi has crossed all the embarrassment level.
Shame!
