He won a World Cup, has a Ballon d'Or and says that Messi's award was a farce

Lionel Messi won the Ballon d'Or again. The best player in the world won the France Football magazine award for the eighth time and became the first footballer in history to achieve it playing for a team from the United States. Now, the choice of Leo as the winner generated an infinite number of repercussions, both good and bad.

Although several important football personalities had already been anticipating that Messi should be the winner of the 2023 edition of the Ballon d'Or for what he did in the 2022 Qatar World Cup, now a legend who knows what it is to win both the award of the French magazine like a World Cup raised its voice and spoke out against Lionel being the winner over Erling Haaland.

This is Lothar Matthaus. The former German midfielder won the 1990 World Cup in Italy as a great figure for the Germans, which led him to win the Ballon d'Or that same year. Now, the native of Bavaria did not like that Leo had been awarded and this was expressed in the last few hours on Sky Sports: "Haaland played better than Messi throughout last year. That shows that a World Cup counts more than anything else. I think he didn't deserve to win the Ballon d'Or. I feel that the choice was a farce and I say this as a Messi fan".

These words generated a great controversy and Matthaus was on the sidelines of other emblems such as Cristiano Ronaldo or Didier Deschamps who questioned whether Messi really deserved to be recognized as the best player in the world in the last year.

Haaland congratulated Messi on social networks for his eighth Ballon d'Or

Although Lothar Matthaus complained in defense of Erling Haaland, the Norwegian Manchester City attacker came out to congratulate Lionel Messi on his Instagram account with a story in which he shared a post from the Inter Miami player himself and wrote “Congratulations @leomessi”, along with an applause emoji.