Messi vs Haaland: Ronaldo’s Boss Roberto Martinez Raises FIFA Best Awards Concerns

• Roberto Martinez has hinted that there were mistakes with the 2023 FIFA Best Awards
• The World Cup question that propelled Lionel Messi to victory was unclear to the voters
• Messi beat the treble-winning Erling Haaland, sparking issues on the integrity of the award

Portugal's head coach, Roberto Martinez, has stirred fresh questions over the 2023 FIFA Best Awards criteria.

Lionel Messi was controversially chosen ahead of Erling Haaland despite the latter leading a dominating season with Manchester City, where he won the treble.

Messi's World Cup win with Argentina in 2022 was adjudged to be the main factor in his success. However, according to FIFA rules, the award was supposed to be based after the World Cup final.

World Cup question at FIFA Awards

Martinez has now admitted that there was a misunderstanding about whether the World Cup was supposed to count or not. The Spanish tactician was quizzed to explain his vote choices after he settled for Marcelo Brozovic, Bernardo Silva and Messi in his picks.

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"It was a mistake. 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," he said in an interview with A Bola.

Brozovic was part of the Croatia team that finished third in Qatar and the final of the Champions League with Inter Milan.

Martinez, who now coaches Messi's rival Cristiano Ronaldo, also faulted the staging of the World Cup in December, which complicated voting.

"Now we have a lot of votes, we have a lot of elections. We have the FIFA player, The Best player, who has been there all season. The first time, we had a World Cup in winter and the voting was strange because it was only for six months."

Messi's silence on FIFA awards speaks volumes

Sports Brief has also reported that Messi has not publicly accepted his FIFA Best Awards.

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The Argentine tends to share his wins on social media, but after beating Haaland to the 2023 award, his silence was as deafening as the nature of the awards.

In the set timeframe of the awards, Haaland achieved more than Messi before the latter moved to Inter Miami.