Poruguese legend Cristiano Ronaldo is a strong contender to beat Victor Osimhen, Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe and a host of other stars to this year’s Best Men’s Player Award at the Global Soccer Awards, PUNCH Sports Extra reports.
Osimhen was nominated for the award alongside 29 other football players including superstars like Ronaldo, Ballon d’Or winner, Messi, Mbappe, Haaland, and Mohamed Salah.
The award is extremely competitive due to the calibre of the nominees so it was always going to be a herculean task for Osimhen to win the award.
The Globe Soccer Awards is an annual awards night organised by the Dubai Sports Council to honour and recognise the best players in the world. Ronaldo, 38, is the oldest player nominated, while Messi, 36, is the third-oldest, behind Luka Modric, 38.
Messi won the award in 2005 but six-time winner Ronaldo is the only player ever to receive it more than once and is now in line to claim a seventh award.
The 2023 Globe Soccer Awards has a transparent voting system to select a winner simply by clicking on the voting link and selecting the nominee of your choice to vote for.
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The process also allows you to see how many votes each player has and Victor Osimhen currently has 0.3 per cent of the total votes which is very far from the leader Cristiano Ronaldo.
Ronaldo has 40.3 per cent of the total vote, making him the leader by a long distance ahead of the next highest, Mohamed Salah who has 15.5 percent of the votes as at the time of this report.
Other players currently ahead of Osimhen in the race include Lionel Messi with 12.5 per cent, Erling Haaland with 10.1 per cent,Jude Bellingham with 3.3 per cent, Yassine Bounou with 2.9 per cent, Karim Benzema with 2.8 percent, Kevin De Bruyne with 2.1 per cent, Kylian Mbappe with 1.9 per cent, Bernardo Silva with 1.8 percent, Vinicius Jr with 1.7 per cent, Kvicha Kvaratskhelia with 0.8 per cent, Ruben Dias with 0.9 per cent and Phil Foden with 0.5 percent.
Osimhen currently has more votes than 15 other players on the nominations list including Harry Kane, Jack Grealish, Antoine Griezmann, Robert Lewandowski, Modric and Bukayo Saka.
Ronaldo is also the overwhelming favorite to beat 12 nominees for the inaugural Best Middle East Player award. The other 11 players up for this gong are Benzema, Salem Al-Dawsari, Mourad Batna, Mohamed El Shenawy, Abderrazak Hamdallah, Odion Ighalo, Ali Mabkhout, Riyad Mahrez, Michael Olunga, Alejandro Romero and Talisca.