Lionel Messi and Erling Haaland were tied on points at FIFA The Best Gala, but the Argentinian was named the 2023 World Player of the Year and the European press reacted strongly.

>> FIFA The Best Awards Gala 2023 VIDEO: Lionel Messi, winner in front of Haaland and Mbappe

Lionel Messi beat Erling Haaland thanks to the votes of the captains

The votes of the selection teams, captains, journalists and fans of the FIFA affiliated teams were taken into account for awarding the awards.

Messi and Haaland each scored 48 points, but Article 12 of the award rules explains that in the event of a tie, the winner is the one who received the most five points in the captains’ vote.

Leo Messi, who scored 48 points, received 13 points from the captains (677 votes), 11 points from the coaches (476 votes), 11 points from the press (315 votes) and 13 points from the fans (613,293 votes).

Haaland’s 48 points came from 11 points from captains (557 votes), 13 points from coaches (541 votes), 13 points from the media (729 votes), and 11 points from fans (365,893 votes).

Know:

• Edi Iordenescu (Romanian coach) voted in turn for Erling Haaland, Kylian Mbappe and Victor Osimen.

• Nicolae Stanciu (captain of the Romanian national team) gave preference to Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe and Kevin De Bruyne in turn.

The European press is outraged after Messi’s victory over Haaland: “FIFA is the big loser of the evening”

Lionel Messi’s triumph is all the more surprising because the award was supposed to be based on sporting performance between December 19, 2022, the day after the World Cup final, and August 20, 2023, a period when Lionel Messi did not particularly stand out. PSG (9 goals, 6 assists), winning only the French championship, writes News.ro.

Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) refers to “scandal”, the term adopted Dagbladetone of the most important newspapers in Norway, and Verdun Gangwhich posted on its website the headline “It’s All Wrong”.

The final rating caused a storm of reaction from the moment the results were announced and the details of the vote were made public, which highlighted the fact that Lionel Messi could count primarily on the support of the captains of the national teams and the fans, without whom he could not have won this award, the journalists overwhelmingly voted for Erling Haaland .

times condemned the “very strange decision”, believing that Norwegian Erling Haaland should have been crowned. Manchester Evening News he also expressed his surprise at the result, sharing the frustration of Manchester City’s disgusted fans. In Germany, 1990 World Cup captain Lothar Matthaus criticized Messi’s choice: “He hasn’t won any important title!”.

“Messi does not deserve this,” the Spanish publication signed relief, before adding: “If FIFA were a respected organization, which it isn’t, and if the ‘Best’ awards were valued and desired, which they are not, given the list of nominees, the absurdity of what happened in London would be indelible. a stain on her history. But it was a confirmation of a fundamental error, because the winning of an individual in a collective game can only be considered an anomaly and a discredit, which almost equally caused surprise and indignation (…) In the few seconds that lasted Several centuries, gestures were broadcast on television that revealed level of surrealism. Haland’s father, a Norwegian with a military appearance, raised his left eyebrow twice, one of those tics you get when you have trouble controlling your nerves.’

I WOULD writes that Messi wins the most controversial The Best of all time: “The Best gala 2023 was not without controversy, and one of the main reasons was that Leo Messi won the 2023 FIFA Best Male Player award. The truth is that Erling Haaland, the heavy favorite to win the award after his treble with Manchester City, was level with the Argentine star, but FIFA’s tie-breaker criteria tipped the scales in Leo Messi’s favour.

for sign, Lionel Messi’s best player award was “the biggest surprise in the recent history of football awards”. The result, which “seriously undermined the confidence in FIFA, the big loser of the evening,” writes the Madrid newspaper.