"Fifa Best Player" Award

The winner of 2019 Fifa best player in Lionel Andrés Messi. He won it by defeating Virgil Van Dijk and Cristiano Ronaldo. In a glittering and superlative career to date, there are few personal accolades and records that Lionel Messi has not won. One that had eluded him was the title of The Best FIFA Men’s Player – until this year. After a great year in domestic, helping the Blaugrana side to lift La liga for 26th time, he also claimed the European Golden boot by scoring 36 goals in La liga 2018-19.

His brilliance also helped the Blaugrana to the UEFA Champions League semi-finals and the Copa Del Rey final while he played his part in Argentina’s third-place finish at the Copa America. It may have taken four attempts, but Messi is now The Best.

Among women Megan Rapinoe claimed Fifa's best women player award by defeating Alex Morgan and Lucy Bronze who were her closest competitor.force of nature both on and off the pitch, the iconic No15 led the Stars and Stripes to a second successive FIFA Women’s World Cup triumph with an inspirational series of performances. Her ability to score crucial goals at crucial moments – in a tight round of 16 game against Spain, against the hosts France in the quarter-final and in France 2019 final itself – saw her claim both the adidas Golden Ball and Golden Boot at the global finals.

Merge with Ballon D'or

From 2010 to 2015 " Fifa Best player" was merged with France ballon D'or and was known as "The FIFA Ballon d'Or". It was an annual association football award presented to the world's best men's player from 2010 to 2015. Awarded jointly by FIFA and France Football, the prize was a merger of the FIFA World Player of the Year award and the Ballon d'Or, the two most prestigious individual honours in world football. The FIFA Ballon d'Or was awarded based on votes from international journalists and national team coaches and captains, who selected the players they deemed to have performed the best in the previous calendar year.

How does voting works-

In the voting system fans has the opportunity to cast 25% of the total votes,with Fifa's selection committee finalising the decisions. The remaining 75% of the votes are distributed evenly between the national coaches of FIFA Member Associations, their team captains as well as a select group of football journalists from those countries.

The selection panel to shortlist the initial Best Men's Player and Best Men's Coach awards includes several former players. Last year, the selection panel included Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Kaka, Fabio Capello and Ronaldo.

Winners since it was introduced -

In 2016, Fifa parted away with France football association while awarding the best player award. In 2016, The Fifa Men best player award was grabbed by Cristiano Ronaldo with Messi and Neymar being runners up. The case was exactly the same in 2017 as Ronaldo took the award for two consecutive years. After a brilliant performance in 2018 saw Luka Modric winning the award on the virtue of his performances both with Real Madrid and Croatia. In 2019 it was time for Lionel Messi to get the award. On the personal level he had a phenomenal 2018-19 season which earned him his first Fifa Best player award since it parted away with France football association.

In the women's divisions in 2016 it was Carli Lloyd.

2017 saw Lieke Martens win it. In 2018 Marta won it in a very close competition. In 2019 Megan Rapinoe won it by beating Alex Morgan and Lucy Bronze.

Number of votes in 2019

Of the captains, Messi received 377 votes, ahead of Virgil van Dijk's 337 and Cristiano Ronaldo's 330.

In the coaches' count, he got 379 votes, beating Ronaldo (307) and Van Dijk (289).

But it was in the popular vote that he pulled clear, earning 1,359,728 votes to the Portuguese's 962,919 and the Dutchman's 704,235.

Members of the media did favour Van Dijk, though, and this will be a concern to Messi ahead of the Ballon d'Or calendar year award.In The Best, Van Dijk earned 462 votes from journalists to Messi's 364 and Ronaldo's 264. But overall it was Messi who surpassed both of them quite comfortably.