{"id":152411,"date":"2012-01-10T11:07:55","date_gmt":"2012-01-10T07:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=152411"},"modified":"2012-01-10T11:07:55","modified_gmt":"2012-01-10T07:07:55","slug":"lionel-messi-wins-3rd-straight-fifa-player-of-year-award-in-big-night-for-barcelona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2012\/01\/10\/lionel-messi-wins-3rd-straight-fifa-player-of-year-award-in-big-night-for-barcelona.html","title":{"rendered":"Lionel Messi Wins 3rd Straight FIFA Player of Year Award in Big Night for Barcelona"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Already considered one of soccer\u2019s greats at age 24, Lionel Messi on Monday became the first to win FIFA player of the year three times in a row, <span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/sports\/dcunited\/pep-guardiola-wins-fifa-best-coach-award-after-guiding-barcelona-to-5-trophies-in-2011\/2012\/01\/09\/gIQAw1KtlP_story.html?tid=pm_sports_pop\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The Washington Post<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span> reports, citing AP.<\/p>\n<p>The Barcelona and Argentina forward received the FIFA Ballon d\u2019Or award for 2011, beating club teammate Xavi Hernandez and Real Madrid\u2019s Cristiano Ronaldo.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a huge honor,\u201d Messi said after accepting the trophy from retired Brazilian great Ronaldo.<\/p>\n<p>The only other three-time winners are Ronaldo (1996-97, 2002) and Zinedine Zidane (1998, 2000, 2003). The FIFA award was renamed last year when it merged with France Football\u2019s Golden Ball.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/lionelmess.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-152352\" title=\"lionelmess\" src=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/lionelmess.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/epress.am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/lionelmess.jpg 450w, https:\/\/epress.am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/lionelmess-300x233.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>On a night of Barcelona dominance, Pep Guardiola (pictured below, left) was honored as men\u2019s coach of the year. He was chosen ahead of Real Madrid\u2019s Jose Mourinho and Manchester United\u2019s Alex Ferguson.<\/p>\n<p>Among the women, Homare Sawa of Japan ended Brazilian forward Marta\u2019s five-year reign as the top player. American Abby Wambach was a finalist. Sawa led Japan to win the 2011 Women\u2019s World Cup and adds the FIFA prize to those as the tournament\u2019s best player and top scorer.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/pep.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-152353\" title=\"pep\" src=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/pep.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/epress.am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/pep.jpg 450w, https:\/\/epress.am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/pep-300x233.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Messi scored 55 goals in 2011 for Barcelona, which won its third Champions League title in six seasons, and he had four goals for Argentina\u2019s national team. Barcelona won five trophies last year.<\/p>\n<p>Messi received 48 percent of the points in votes cast by national team coaches and captains plus selected reporters. Cristiano Ronaldo finished second with 22 percent and Xavi had 9 percent to finish third for the third straight year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis one is very special because I want to share this with my friend and teammate Xavi. He deserves it,\u201d Messi said.<\/p>\n<p>Messi missed a second trophy for the year\u2019s most beautiful goal. Fans voted online from a list of 10 and chose the goal by Brazil forward Neymar in his club Santos\u2019s 5-4 loss against Flamengo last July (video below).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe width=\"425\" height=\"344\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TD6oSrEEPDM?wmode=transparent\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen> <\/iframe><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Already considered one of soccer\u2019s greats at age 24, Lionel Messi on Monday became the first to win FIFA player of the year three times in a row.<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":152354,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[23585,17964,36484,36482,36483],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152411"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}