The night was one of absolute Argentine dominance in men’s football (awards for the best player, goalkeeper, coach and fans), and, unsurprisingly, Lionel Messi won The Best, the best player in the world awarded by FIFA, on Monday. . The Argentine, who won the Qatar World Cup in 2022, relegated two Frenchmen to the following positions: Kylian Mbappé, and Karim Benzema. With Messi’s triumph, only four footballers have won The Best for best player: Cristiano Ronaldo (2016 and 2017), Luka Modric (2018), Robert Lewandowski (2020 and 2021) and Lionel Messi (2019 and 2022). ).
In a ceremony that began with a tribute to Pelé and where João Cancelo was the only Portuguese to be distinguished – the full-back is part of FIFPro’s eleven for the season -, the winner of The Best in women’s football was, as expected, the Spanish Alexia Putellas , and awards were also given, for women and men, for best goalkeeper (Mary Earps and Emiliano Martínez) and best coach (Sarina Wiegman and Lionel Scaloni).
The Puskás award (best goal of 2022) went to Polish Marcin Oleksy, an adapted football player, while the Fair Play award went to Georgian Luka Lochoshvili.
In his victory speech, Messi admitted that he was “still nervous” when receiving the award and thanked the players of the Argentina national team: “Here I am, Scaloni and Dibu [Emiliano Martínez], and we are representatives of all. This award is also theirs and recognizes what the whole group has achieved. This year was crazy for me: I managed to achieve my dream [vencer o Mundial] after so much fighting, after so much searching, after so much insisting.”
Doubts about who would be the main winners began to be dispelled hours before the start of the gala at the Pleyel auditorium, in Paris, by the way Real Madrid was represented at the ceremony.
Even with Benzema (best player and best eleven), Ancelotti (best coach), Courtois (best goalkeeper and best eleven) and Modric (best eleven) on the list of nominees, the madridistas almost completely boycotted The Best.
The madridista club only sent Emilio Butragueño, director of institutional relations, to France, and, according to the daily newspaper Marca, “the lack of prizes” was “the main reason” for the “boycott”, together “with the fact that Vinícius [Júnior] not be among the 26 finalists to be part of the FIFPro season’s eleven”.
Awarded by FIFA for more than three decades – the first to win was Lothar Matthaus after captaining Germany in the 90 World Cup -, the distinction for the best in football was even shared, between 2009 and 2015, between FIFA and the French magazine France Football.
However, in the last eight years, FIFA instituted The Best FIFA Football Awards, assuming the delivery of several distinctions. In a first phase, the ten finalists are chosen by a committee made up of personalities linked to football, and then it is up to four groups (managers, national team captains, journalists and public) to vote in equal parts (25%) to define the winners.
