Messi FIFA Best award win over Haaland questioned as system 'made mistakes'

29 January 2024 , 13:36

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Lionel Messi was named the FIFA Best Men's Player of the Year (Image: Getty Images)

Portugal boss Roberto Martinez believes that he and others made mistakes during the voting of the FIFA's The Best award, which saw Lionel Messi controversially win ahead of Erling Haaland.

The former Belgium and Everton coach believes there was some confusion over whether to take into account the 2022 World Cup when making an assessment. That saw him choose Marcelo Brozovic but he now believes that choice was an error.

World Cup winning captain Messi, edged out Manchester City's Haaland, who could lay claim to Champions League glory and more goals than anyone else in Europe in 2023. The duo received the same number of points in voting where national team captains and coaches make their selections alongside journalists and fans.

Messi and Haaland each received 48 points but the former won due to being selected as first choice more frequently than his Norwegian counterpart. The Inter Miami superstar was selected as first preference 107 times by international captains compared to Haaland's 64.

With the award only supposed to take into account the period between December 19 2022 and August 20 2023, Messi's World Cup achievements should not have impacted voters selections. Martinez believes that many people fell into the same trap as him, however.

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When questioned by A Bola about his vote for Brozovic, the 50-year-old coach said: "It was a mistake.

"Now we have a lot of votes, we have a lot of elections. We have the FIFA player, The Best player, who has been there all season. The first time we have a World Cup in winter and the voting is strange, because it was only for six months.

Roberto Martinez believes that people could have made a mistake when voting in FIFA's best awards (James Gill)

"For me, individual awards in football are difficult. I think the individual player represents what the team did. And what about Brozovic and Bernardo, and the players who were in the Champions League final, and who were successful in domestic trophies.

"But Brozovic is a player who represents an idea of the game, who represents what Croatia is doing. But it was a mistake, for the period in question.

"And I think I wasn't the only one who made that mistake, because when you see the votes, I think there's more of an intention to see what happened at the World Cup too."

FIFA's The Best award is separate from the Ballon d'Or, which was also won by Messi. That latter prize did take into account the Qatar World Cup in its considerations.

Scott Trotter