The comparisons between Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi has dominated conversations between football fans in the past decade. However, in the past one year, the debate has somewhat become lopsided with Messi guiding Argentina to the FIFA World Cup title and Ronaldo losing favour in Manchester United and joining Saudi Arabia's Al-Nassr. Ronaldo was greeted by Messi chants from the rival club supporters in Saudi Arabia and another such incident happened following his team's win over Al Baten. Ronaldo was walking through the tunnel when a young fan shouted in front of him that Messi is way better. In a video doing the rounds of social media, Ronaldo was seen ignoring the fan before shouting "And that was the easy game" to the people around him.
rgentina captain Lionel Messi bagged the best FIFA men's player prize for 2022 on Monday during an award ceremony in Paris. This was the second time that Messi has won the honour inaugurated by FIFA in 2016.
The 35-year-old Messi got the award beating his Paris Saint-Germain teammate, and World Cup final rival, Kylian Mbappe as well as Karim benzema. The winner for the award is decided on the basis of the votes casted by the select national team captains and coaches.
One thing which came as a surprise was that Pepe casted the vote as a representative of Portugal in the place of Cristiano Ronaldo. The Portugal captain refrained from the voting as the Al-Nassr star was benched in many games during the 2022 FIFA World Cup and hence senior player Pepe was given opportunity to cast his vote.
Pepe voted for Kylian Mbappe as first choice, followed by Luka Modric and Karim Benzema.