FIFA confirm three finalists for The Best Men's Player award
By Tom Gott
Karim Benzema, Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe have been named the finalists for The Best FIFA Men's Player award 2022.
Four groups of voters - coaches, captains, journalists, and fans - were given a 14-player shortlist and chose their first, second and third picks to win the prize, and three players with the highest scores would move on to the final voting.
Voters will once again be asked to select between Benzema, Messi and Mbappe to win the prize, which takes into consideration the players' performances between August 8, 2021 and December 18, 2022.
Of the trio, only Messi has ever won the award. The Argentine finished atop the pile in 2019 and has only failed to make the final three once since the award's conception in 2016 - Messi was left out in 2018, when Luka Modric won.
Messi, a World Cup winner with Argentina, has also been in sparkling form at club level for Paris Saint-Germain since the arrival of Christophe Galtier.
PSG teammate Mbappe also makes the cut, with the Frenchman racking up goals at a ludicrous rate for both club and country. He bagged eight goals at the World Cup, moving him into sixth overall in the competition's all-time scoring charts. Remember, he's only 24.
Unlike Messi and Mbappe, Benzema did not play at the World Cup. Injury cost the Frenchman one final shot at international glory but did not hamper his year, in which he won the Ballon d'Or for his mesmeric performances with Real Madrid.