Why did Messi win The Best if he received the same amount of votes as Haaland?

Specialists, as well as fans, before The Best ceremony agreed that the great favorite to win the award for best player in the world during 2023 was Erling Haaland. He had performed superbly during the 2022/23 season with Manchester City, leading the team with 52 goals in 53 games to the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League titles.

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That's why everyone believed he had the edge over the other finalists, Kylian Mbappé and Lionel Messi. 'Kiki' excelled for Paris Saint-Germain and the France national team, but only won Ligue 1 and was quickly eliminated in the Champions League by Bayern Munich. Leo suffered the same during the first half of the year, when he was Mbappé's teammate at PSG, and then went to play for Inter Miami, with whom he won the Leagues Cup.

Although the Argentine forward had a good year and, in fact, won the Ballon d'Or in October, few believed he had a chance of being chosen this Monday by FIFA. That is why the announcement came as a surprise. But even more striking was the result of the vote that was released minutes later: there, Lionel Messi and Erling Haaland finished with the same score (48), while Kylian Mbappé was further behind (35).

FIFA gave the explanation through a post on social media: "For The Best FIFA Men's Player 2023, two players tied for first place. The winner was decided by the highest number of "five point" scores from the votes cast by the men's national-team captains, as per article 12 of the rules of allocation". And then they provided the statistics of those "five point" scores. There Leo clearly outnumbered Erling 107 to 64.

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Who did he vote for?

FIFA also shared the votes of each of the captains of the 211 teams. Lionel Messi chose Erling Haaland, Kylian Mbappé and Julian Alvarez as the best players in the world. As coaches, Pep Guardiola, Xavi Hernández and Luciano Spalletti, and as goalkeepers, Ederson, André Onana and Marc-André Ter Stegen.