Lionel Messi wins the GOAL50 2023 men’s award over Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham. Racheal Kundananji wins the women’s award after a vote by fans around the world.
5.75 million votes were cast in both the men’s and women’s games, showing that GOAL readers really wanted to support their favorite players.
Lionel Messi of Inter Miami and Racheal Kundananji of Madrid CFF were named winners of the 2023 GOAL50 awards. They beat other finalists in a series of head-to-head matches decided on by fans around the world.
Kevin De Bruyne, Erling Haaland, Jude Bellingham, Kylian Mbappe, and Messi were the top five finishers in the men’s category. Asisat Oshoala, Linda Caicedo, Tabitha Chawinga, and Lauren James were the top five finishers in the women’s category.
It wasn’t a surprise that Messi won his head-to-head after another great year. Kundananji, on the other hand, was praised by fans for her great first season at Madrid CFF and important contributions to the Zambia national team. Read on to learn more about this year’s winners…
GOAL50 WINNER FOR MEN: LIONEL MESSI
Messi came into 2023 as a World Cup winner after leading Argentina to victory in Qatar in December. He also won a second Ligue 1 title after returning to Paris Saint-Germain. During his last season at Parc des Princes, the small magician scored 21 goals and set up 20 others across all competitions. He decided to start a new journey in Major League Soccer when his contract expired in June.
For the first two years of his contract, Messi signed with Inter Miami. He made an immediate impact at DRV PNK Stadium, scoring 14 goals in his first 11 games and helping the club win its first trophy, the League Cup.
Messi also helped Argentina get off to a great start in their 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign, winning five of their first six games. For his amazing play for both club and country, he won a record-setting eighth Ballon d’Or.
Now that he’s 36, the player has won seven GOAL50 titles, two more than his idol Cristiano Ronaldo, who missed the final for the first time.
Read the full 50-1 GOAL50 countdown here.
Goal50’s winner for women is Rachael Kundananji.
Kundananji, a forward from Zambia, made the dream move to Madrid CFF in August 2022 and had a great first season, repaying the club’s faith. Madrid barely made it to fifth place in Liga F, but Kundananji scored 25 goals in 29 games and won the Golden Boot award.
Two of them came in a surprise win over Barcelona, which made her even more of a star as one of the best young players in the game. Because of how well Kundananji played, Zambia chose to bring her to the World Cup. In a 3-1 win over Costa Rica in the group stage, she scored the first goal of the event.
Even though Zambia didn’t make it to the next round, the 23-year-old scored her first hat-trick for her country in a friendly win over Morocco in September. She then scored again in Madrid’s 5-1 win over Sevilla.
Kundananji has scored four more goals for her club since then, and if she keeps going the way she is, her GOAL50 nomination could be the first of many.
Read the full 50-1 GOAL50 countdown here.
What does Goal 50 mean?
GOAL50 is an award that names the 50 best football players in the world over the past year.
Until 2021, the 42 editions of GOAL had winners chosen by a group of experts. However, there was a change in the procedure in 2022 that let fans decide who won by showing randomly chosen head-to-heads to the general voter.
Based on their play at club and international levels, two shortlists of the 50 best male and female players in the world were made. Readers could access these lists through the GOAL website and apps and cast their votes.
WINNERS IN THE PAST
Ronaldo got the first GOAL50 award in 2008, while he was still playing for Manchester United. The next year, Messi won the award. In 2010, Wesley Snejder of Inter Milan won, but over the next seven years, Ronaldo won four more titles at Real Madrid and Messi won three at Barcelona. No one else came close.
In 2018, Luka Modric of Real Madrid won the award. The next year, Virgil van Dijk of Liverpool did the same, and in 2020, Robert Lewandowski of Bayern Munich won the award after a great year. Messi won the next three awards, which put him back in the spotlight. He will be hoping to add another to his collection in 2024.
Megan Rapinoe was the first woman to win in 2019. A year later, Pernille Harder followed in the footsteps of the USMNT great, and then Alexia Putellas, the star player for Barcelona, won both of her games in a row.