FIFA have released the final nominees for The Best FIFA Men’s Player award and one of Cristiano Ronaldo, Robert Lewandowski or Lionel Messi will win the award.
A list of 11 players were initially released back in November with names including Liverpool trio Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah and Virgil Van Dijk, Kevin de Bruyne, Sergio Ramos and PSG duo Kylian Mbappe and Neymar.
Lewandowski, Messi and Ronaldo are the ones in the running and it is familiar faces in it once again. Ronaldo won the award in 2016 and 2017 while Messi is the current holder of the award.
However, this year’s edition is leaning strongly towards Lewandowski with the Polish forward currently tagged as the favourite.
The Bayern Munich talisman was involved in a whopping 55 goals and 10 assists all of last season and was also the favourite to win the Ballon d’Or before it was eventually cancelled. The fact that Bayern also won the treble which includes the Champions League puts him in even better frame ahead of Ronaldo and Messi.
This season, Lewandowski has picked up from his numbers last season and already has 16 goals and four assists to his name. He was also the first forward to hit double figures of goals in all of Europe’s top five leagues this term.
For Ronaldo, last season was a fairly decent season but Juventus bowed out of the Champions League at the hands of Lyon quite early for their own standards. Messi had it even worse as Barcelona failed to win a single title.
The award will be announced in a virtual ceremony on December 17.
