Messi is the number 1 candidate for FIFA's Best Player of the Year award.

Footballer Lionel Messi is considered a strong candidate to win the FIFA “Best Player of the Year” award. Photo: THX/TTXVN

Lionel Messi, Robert Lewandowski and Mohamed Salah are all on the shortlist for the FIFA World Player of the Year award and Messi is still considered the favourite to win the award.

The trio beat off competition from Cristiano Ronaldo, Kylian Mbappe and Karim Benzema in the race for the award, which will be presented on January 17 this year.

Although his start to the new season at French club Paris Saint German (PSG) was not very impressive, because this award is given based on the performance of players in a specific period of time, Messi can still have an advantage over Mohamed Salah (Liverpool) and Robert Lewandowski (Bayer Munich).

FIFA said a jury will select the award winners based on their achievements between October 8, 2020 and August 7, 2021.

Up to this point, Messi has played 11 matches for PSG in Ligue 1 and has only scored 1 goal.

However, this achievement was not within the FIFA evaluation time frame to select the award-winning player.

According to FIFA's time frame, Messi scored 43 goals in 47 matches and had 17 assists before leaving Barca for PSG.

Also during the above mentioned period, Messi won the King's Cup with Barca and won the Copa America with the Argentina team.

Meanwhile, Lewandowski scored 51 goals and had 8 assists while Salah scored 26 goals and had 6 assists during the period FIFA used as the basis for choosing the winner.

Voting for the "Player of the Year" from a shortlist of candidates includes coaches and captains of national teams around the world, media experts and fans voting online.

According to VNA