Barcelona’s Lionel Messi won the best men’s player at the Best Fifa Football Awards in Milan as Juventus’ Cristiano Ronaldo and Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk missed out on the top prize.
It is the sixth time Messi has been voted the world’s best, after wins in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2015.
The 32-year-old Argentine helped Barcelona win La Liga and reach the semi-finals of the Champions League.
Klopp gets coach prize ahead of Guardiola and Pochettino
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp was named men’s coach of the year after a season in which they beat Tottenham 2-0 to lift the Champions League.
The Reds also finished second in the Premier League with 97 points – the third-highest tally recorded in the competition.
Klopp was nominated for the award along with two other Premier League bosses – Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola and Tottenham’s Mauricio Pochettino.
It is great, nobody expected this 20, 10, five, four years ago that I would be standing here,” said Klopp, whose team have won all six league matches at the start of the 2019-20 season.
“We know what an incredible job you [Mauricio Pochettino] did and what Pep did. I have to say thank you to my outstanding club Liverpool FC.
“To the owners thank you, they gave me an incredible team. I have to thank my team – as a coach you can only be as good as your team is. I’m really proud of being manager of such an incredible bunch of players.”
