Who Liverpool stars voted for in The Best FIFA Awards 2023 - Van Dijk, Salah, Robertson, Szoboszlai picks
FIFA's annual, and appallingly named, The Best award ceremony took place on Monday night in London, with Lionel Messi winning the gong for Men's Player.
Usually a shoo-in for any individual award going over the last 15 years, the Argentine's win came as something of a surprise given that his 2022 World Cup triumph fell outside of the time period under consideration for the award.
Meanwhile, Manchester City's Erling Haaland had to make do with second place, despite his side's treble win, with Kylian Mbappe taking third.
Another City star, Kevin de Bruyne was voted into fourth, with Napoli star man Victor Osimhen making up the top five.
In a City-heavy evening of awards, Ederson was crowned The Best FIFA Men's Goalkeeper – with Alisson not even on the shortlist for consideration – while Pep Guardiola got the honour for The Best Men's Coach.
Aitana Bonmati (Barcelona/Spain), Mary Earps (Manchester United/England) and Sarina Wiegman (England) won the respective awards for the women's football categories.
There was, admittedly unsurprisingly, no representation for Liverpool players on the night after a silverware-free 12 months for the Reds.
However, several of Jurgen Klopp's squad did play their part in crowing the winners.
The awards are decided by a voting panel comprising all the FIFA registered national team coaches and captains, as well as international media representatives and fans online – with each counting for 25%.
That means that Virgil van Dijk (Netherlands), Mohamed Salah (Egypt), Andy Robertson (Scotland) and Dominik Szoboszlai (Hungary) all got to submit their top three player picks as captains of their countries.
Interestingly, three out of the four Liverpool stars named Messi as their number one choice, with only Szoboszlai going for Premier League rival Haaland.
Salah didn't even have Haaland as his number two, instead putting his City teammate De Bruyne in the second spot.
Meanwhile, Szoboszlai and Robertson both had the regularly Liverpool-linked Kylian Mbappe in their top three.
Here's how the full voting went down.
Who Liverpool players voted for in The Best FIFA Men's Award 2023:
Virgil van Dijk: Lionel Messi, Erling Haaland, Kevin de Bruyne
Mohamed Salah: Lionel Messi, Kevin de Bruyne, Erling Haaland
Dominik Szoboszlai: Erling Haaland, Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe
Andy Robertson: Lionel Messi, Erling Haaland, Kylian Mbappe