PORTUGAL boss Roberto Martinez has claimed he messed up his Fifa The Best vote - and that other managers and captains made the same mistake.
Lionel Messi edged out Erling Haaland for the title of the finest player on the planet in 2023 despite his move to Inter Miami in the MLS.
Despite an overall tie across the four voting pools, Messi won as he was top of the charts in the players’ section - with his voters including England skipper Harry Kane.
But now former Everton and Belgium manager Martinez has revealed he misunderstood the voting rules - and suggested enough others made the same mistake to potentially tip the balance Messi’s way.
Martinez said: “It was a mistake.
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“Now we have a lot of votes, we have a lot of elections. We have the FIFA player, The Best player, who has been there all season.
“In 2022, for the first time, we had a World Cup in winter and the voting is strange, because it was only for six months.”
Martinez put Croatia’s Marcelo Brozovic top of his three-man list, followed by Manchester City’s Bernardo Silva and, in third, Messi - meaning he did not have Haaland in the frame at all.
But this, he explained, was because he wrongly took the World Cup into account - even though Qatar 2022 performances were included in the previous Fifa vote, in March.
Martinez added: “For me, individual awards in football are difficult.
“I think the individual player represents what the team did.
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“What about Brozovic and Bernardo, and the players who were in the Champions League final, and who were successful in domestic trophies.
“Brozovic is a player who represents an idea of the game, who represents what Croatia is doing.
“But it was a mistake, for the period in question.
“And I think I wasn't the only one who made that mistake, because when you see the votes, I think there's more of an intention to see what happened at the World Cup too.”
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SunSport understands that Fifa are relaxed about the legitimacy of the vote, pointing to the fact that it was made extremely clear to all voters that only performances in the calendar year for January 1 2023 were to be assessed.
In addition, all the international managers and captains had to send in selfies alongside their ballot papers, to ensure that the votes were properly cast.
