By how many votes did Lionel Messi beat Haaland in the Ballon d’Or? Check out the numbers for the top ten finalists

Lionel Messi won the Ballon d’Or for the eighth time in his career, making football history as the king of this category. The results of the poll sparked a debate about whether the Argentine star deserved it. Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappé were named among the most frequently mentioned potential winners. But how many votes did they fall short?

As always, the results of the Ballon d’Or 2023 have sparked debate

Did he win deservedly? As is often the case with individual footballer polls, not everyone is happy with the results. It is rare that there is no debate about the winner, as was the case in 2022 when Karim Benzema won.

Erling Haaland experienced the success of a lifetime in his debut season in the Islands. After his transfer from Dortmund, he won a treble with Manchester City and broke records in the goalscoring stats as well.

Kylian Mbappé began his sixth season in a Paris Saint-Germain jersey last season and he was the driving force behind the team’s quest for the league title. Even in the national team jersey, he took France to the final of the World Cup in Qatar, where he forced a penalty shootout with a hat-trick.

However, Argentina, led by Lionel Messi, was more successful in this one and was named the best player of the tournament.

The star Argentine also claimed the World Cup gold medal, which was missing from his incredible collection of club and individual trophies.

So it was no surprise that Messi was the front-runner to win the Ballon d’Or, which was handed out at Monday’s gala in Paris. As we already know, it was the 36-year-old legend who dominated the aforementioned poll ahead of his young pursuers.

But Lionel Messi dominated the poll by a comfortable margin

And, it must be said, by quite a comfortable margin. As posted by the Football Talk twitter account, Haaland was more than 100 votes short of the winner. Mbappé then trailed the Argentine by almost two hundred votes.

The full results with the vote counts of the top ten finalists in the poll can be found below. Compared to last year, it was a fairly even poll, however Messi won the 2021 poll ahead of Lewandowski by just 33 votes.

Source: Ballon d’Or, Twitter/X