Lewandowski cool about being ignored by Messi in FIFA’s 2021 Best awards

TIL Desk Sports/ Robert Lewandowski has no regrets not having received a vote from Lionel Messi for the FIFA’s Best male player awards of 2021. While Portuguese superstar Ronaldo placed the Bayern Munich striker on first position in his voting, the Argentine striker left him out in his choice for the first three.

After Messi outpaced the 33-year-old Pole in last years’ Ballon d’Or, Lewandowski managed to turn things around and won the FIFA award by four votes ahead of Messi and Liverpool’s Mohammed Salah (9 votes behind).

“You have to ask him about his voting,” the Bayern striker said in an interview . “I think I didn’t do anything wrong and gave him reason to be upset aside from maybe sporting reasons. It was his decision not to vote for me and I respect that,” said Lewandowski. Lewandowski said he is not upset and can’t say anything negative about his award rival.

“At the Ballon d’Or, he voted me as the second. Now it’s a different competition. Maybe it’s why I voted him second at the Ballon d’Or,” the 2020 treble winner said. While the Ballon d’Or is a competition with only journalists voting, the ‘Best award’ is run by half of the voters recruited out of national coaches and international players. Lewandowski rated the ‘Best award’ above the Ballon d’Or. Awards get important when coaches and players do “the main voting”, the Bayern striker added.