Argentine Lionel Messi beat Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk and five-time winner Cristiano Ronaldo to win the best FIFA player of the year award for a record sixth time.<\/p>\n
Barcelona striker Messi’s victory was a surprise as he edged out Virgil Van Dijk, who won the UEFA player’s award last month after helping Liverpool to the Champions League last season.<\/p>\n
Juventus forward Ronaldo had also been shortlisted for the award, but did not attend the ceremony as he was named in FIFA’s World 11 best team along with Messi.<\/p>\n
Both Messi, 32, and Van Dijk, 28, are now in the running for the coveted Ballon d’Or which will be announced on December 2.<\/p>\n
“I want to thank those who decided to give me this recognition,” said Messi.<\/p>\n
Messi was top scorer in the Champions League last season with 12 goals before Barcelona were dumped out by Liverpool in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
U.S. co-captain Megan Rapinoe won the women’s top award after helping her country to the World Cup title this year in a tournament considered to be a milestone in the development and expansion of women’s football internationally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Argentine Lionel Messi beat Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk and five-time winner Cristiano Ronaldo to win the best FIFA player of the year award for a record sixth time. Barcelona striker Messi’s victory was a surprise as he edged out Virgil Van Dijk, who won the UEFA player’s award last month after helping Liverpool to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":9794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,17,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-sports","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9795,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9793\/revisions\/9795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}