Argentine Lionel Messi beat Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk and five-time winner Cristiano Ronaldo to win 'the best FIFA men's player' award for a record sixth time earlier this week.
The best FIFA men's player award, which is formerly known as the FIFA Ballon d'Or, is decided by votes from national team coaches, national team captains, media representatives and the fans, with equal weightage (25%) to all four groups for the final result.
FIFA also released, as per tradition, the data of who voted for who - which brought some startling revelations.
Ronaldo has never voted for Messi!
In this year's awards, Messi voted for Sadio Mane, Ronaldo, and Frenkie de Jong as his top three picks. Ronaldo, on the other hand, did not name the Argentine, instead, voting for Matthijs de Ligt, Frenkie de Jong and Kylian Mbappe.
This continues Ronaldo's trend of not voting for Messi for awards in over a decade of football.
In fact, 17 of Ronaldo's votes since 2010 have been for his teammates, with this year being the only exception.
Messi, on the other hand, in the same time period has voted for his teammate 19 times. In the last two years though, he has voted for his teammate only once (de Jong this year), while including Ronaldo.
According to the data, India football team captain Sunil Chhetri named Van Djik as his top pick with Messi and Mohamed Salah as the next two. Coach Igor Stimac, on the other hand, opted for Ronaldo, Van Djik and Eden Hazard, in that order.
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