Maybe an indication for Ballon d’Or voting later in the season, Lionel Messi has pipped Cristiano Ronaldo and Radamel Falcao to the Onze d’Or award.
The award for the best player from 2011-12 from magazine Onze Mondial has been handed to the Argentinean for the third successive year.
In its 36-year history, the award has previously been handed three times over to Michel Platini and Zinedine Zidane.
Voting for this year’s edition saw Messi receive 47.45 per cent preference, against 27.95 per cent of the votes for runner-up and Onze d’Argent recipient Ronaldo and only 6.1 per cent share for third placed, Onze de Bronze winner Radamel Falcao.
Mesut Ozil and Xavi Hernandez both received 1.38 per cent of the votes, as Karim Benzema netted 2.24 per cent.
Each year, readers of Onze Mondial select a first-choice XI from world and European football and from those XI then vote for who they believe has performed the best over the previous season, with the winner being award the Onze d’Or.
