Lionel Messi has just recorded another achievement as he has been acknowledged by his peers and players in the German Bundesliga as the World’s best player in a recent survey conducted by Kicker.
The diminutive Argentine legend – who has won the highest number of Ballon d’Or awards scooping 7 gongs ahead of Ronaldo, who currently has 5 awards – amassed over 50% of the votes cast by 270 Bundesliga players, beating longtime rival Cristiano Ronaldo to the top spot.
Messi has indeed proven himself more popular than Cristiano Ronaldo in the Bundesliga as La Pulga is considered the World’s Best player by footballers in the German top flight. A range of football-related questions were put to a total of 270 players in the Bundesliga in the 2019/2020 season, and many picked the Argentine as their best player.
According to Sports Bible, Messi got a total of 54.8% of the votes cast, commandingly beating rival Cristiano Ronaldo to second place with 12.6% in a survey conducted by German publication Kicker.
Former Bayern Munich striker, Robert Lewandowski came up third in the poll with 10.7%, while Liverpool defender, Virgil van Dijk had 4.4%, and PSG forward Kylian Mbappe completed the top 5 with 4.4% of the total votes cast.
Meanwhile, at a slight tangential twist to this, former Argentina striker Gabriel Batistuta says Lionel Messi is not Jesus Christ and is delighted the amount of pressure on the PSG star has lessened even now at the beginning of this new season, Goal reports. Batistuta is just happy to see the burden of responsibility being shared around by Messi’s teammates in the current Argentina 2022 squad.
Messi is now backing Real Madrid’s Karim Benzema to win Ballon d’Or this year. Earlier, Sports Brief reported the Paris Saint-Germain superstar stating that Karim Benzema deserves to win the Ballon d’Or this year.
Benzema scored a total of 44 goals for Real Madrid, emerging as the top scorer for Los Blancos in both the UEFA Champions League and the Spanish La Liga last season. His most memorable performances came in the Champions League when he scored back-to-back hat tricks against Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain in the quarter-finals and round of 16, respectively.