Roberto Martínez has admitted that he voted incorrectly for the FIFA The Best Awards that was controversially given to Lionel Messi. Lionel Messi won the award over Erling Haaland.

Many pundits revealed that many coaches and captains voted for Messi over Erling Haaland because the criteria of the award were not explained properly. That was the case for Portugal boss Roberto Martínez.

Roberto Martínez admitted to A Bola that he was not properly advised as to what the criteria for the award was.

Roberto Martínez’s wrong The Best ballot

Roberto Martínez admitted to mistakenly voting for Croatia’s Marcelo Brozovic, because he based his voting on what happened at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

“It was a mistake” admits Martinez, ‘Now we have a lot of votes, we have a lot of elections. We have the FIFA player, The Best player, who has been there all season. The first time we have a World Cup in winter and the voting is strange, because it was only for six months.”

Marcelo Brozovic

Marcelo Brozovic

Martinez would later go on to explain why he voted for Brozovic, “Brozovic is a player who represents an idea of the game, who represents what Croatia is doing. But it was a mistake, for the period in question.

‘And I think I wasn’t the only one who made that mistake, because when you see the votes, I think there’s more of an intention to see what happened at the World Cup too.’