Lionel Messi’s achievements for Argentina in the 2022 World Cup are still fresh in the memory, but they should not have been considered for the FIFA Best Awards, where he came out on top.
Manager of Portugal Roberto Martinez feels that he and other voters erred in FIFA’s The Best award voting, which resulted in Lionel Messi’s contentious victory over Erling Haaland.
The former coach of Everton and Belgium thinks there was considerable disagreement about whether to consider the 2022 World Cup while evaluating. He made the decision to chose Marcelo Brozovic as a result, but he now feels that was a mistake.
Captain Messi, who won the World Cup, defeated Haaland of Manchester City, who may win the Champions League and score the most goals in Europe in 2023. When national team captains and coaches vote with journalists and fans to determine their selections, the two tied for the same number of points.
Messi and Haaland both had 48 points, but Messi prevailed because he was chosen as the first choice more often than his Norwegian opponent. International captains chose the Inter Miami star 107 times as their first choice, compared to Haaland’s 64 selections.
Given that the award was only intended to include the time from December 19, 2022, to August 20, 2023, Messi’s World Cup accomplishments shouldn’t have affected the choices made by voters. But Martinez thinks that a lot of others fell into the same trap as he did.
In response to A Bola’s inquiry over his vote for Brozovic, the fifty-year-old coach stated: “It was an error.
“We have a lot of elections and votes right now. The Best Player in FIFA, who has been there the entire season, is here. The voting was peculiar because it was only open for six months during the first World Cup held in the winter.
“In football, individual trophies are tough for me. In my opinion, each player embodies what the club accomplished. And what about players like Bernardo and Brozovic, who made it to the Champions League final, and those who won domestic trophies?
“However, Brozovic is a player that embodies a concept of the game and what Croatia is accomplishing. For the time frame in question, nevertheless, it was an error.
“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.”
Separate from the Ballon d’Or, which Messi also won, is FIFA’s The Best award. The World Cup in Qatar was taken into consideration while awarding that latter trophy.