Recently, a claim that Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo has voted for France’s Kylian Mbappe, Croatia’s Luka Modric and France’s Karim Benzema in the FIFA Best Man’s Player Award poll has gone viral on social media.
Check out some of the Facebook posts circulating with the same claim here (archive), here (archive), here (archive), here (archive) and here (archive).
Fact Check
According to the rumor scanner’s investigation, The claim that Cristiano Ronaldo voted for Mbappe, Modric, Benzema in the FIFA best player selection is not correct, rather this time Ronaldo did not vote for the FIFA best player selection.
Last February 27, Argentina’s captain Lionel Messi was announced as the best male footballer of 2022 by the football governing body ‘FIFA’ in Paris, France. Before the names were announced, captains and coaches of different countries’ national teams and journalists voted for their three favorite players. Messi won the ‘The Best FIFA Men’s Player Award 2022‘ by getting the highest number of votes.
After the awards ceremony in Paris, social media users claimed that Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo voted for Mbappe, Modric, and Benzema.
In this investigation, by keyword search, a report published on February 28 was found on the website of the international football media ‘Goal’.
According to the report, five-time Ballon d’Or winner Ronaldo did not vote this time. However, Kepler Ferreira (Pepe), another senior player of the national team, voted to represent the country instead of the captain of Portugal.
Pepe voted for Kylian Mbappe, Luka Modric and Karim Benzema.
Later we found the entire voting list on the FIFA website, where the same information (on page no. 5) is mentioned.
That is, Pepe voted from Portugal, not Ronaldo.
Bottom Line
On February 27, FIFA announced the name of Argentina’s captain Lionel Messi as the best male footballer of 2022. Prior to this announcement, national team captains, coaches and journalists from different countries voted for their three favorite players. It is being claimed on Facebook that Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo voted for Mbappe, Modric, Benzema. But the investigation revealed that Ronaldo did not vote this time. Pepe voted for Kylian Mbappe, Luka Modric and Karim Benzema in his place.
It should be noted that FIFA has been awarding the FIFA World Player of the Year from 1991 to 2009. Then the French football magazine France Football and FIFA awarded the best footballer through the Ballon d’Or. Since 2016, FIFA has been giving this award under the name ‘The Best’. Lionel Messi has won the award a total of seven times.
So, the claim that Cristiano Ronaldo voted Mbappe, Modric, Benzema in FIFA’s 2022 Male Footballer of the Year selection is circulating on Facebook; Which is completely false.
