Dutch international defender Virgil van Dijk hopes that the Champions League title he won last season with Liverpool will be enough for him to beat Argentine giants Lionel Messi and Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo in the race for the best footballer in the old continent.
UEFA will announce the successor to Luka Modric in Monaco on the sidelines of the Champions League draw.
A team of 80 coaches of clubs who participated in the Champions League and Europa League last season, along with 55 journalists, chose the trio to compete for the award.
But leaks spread widely two weeks ago in European newspapers, including «Toto Sport» Italian confirms that Lionel Messi is the winner of the award with 252 points, ahead of Van Dyk (224 points), and Ronaldo third with 181 points.
Van Dyck, 28, deserved to be named in the final list, winning the Champions League at the expense of Tottenham in the final and being named the best player in the Premier League, becoming the first defender to win since John Terry with Chelsea in 2005.
The Dutch also won the European Super Cup with Liverpool at the expense of Chelsea on penalties, in addition to leading the Netherlands to be runners-up champion of the first edition of the UEFA Europa League.
Messi, 32, led Barcelona to La Liga with 36 goals and La Liga top scorer with 12 goals, but was knocked out of the semi-finals by Copa America by Brazil.
For his part, Ronaldo (34 years) succeeded in his first season with the Italian Juventus to win the league title, which he monopolized the last season for the eighth consecutive season (Portugal scored 21 goals in the league and ranked fourth on the list of scorers).
The Portuguese star, who was named the best player in Italy, led his country to win the title of the first edition of the European Championship, but his career with Juventus in the Champions League ended in the quarter-finals by Ajax Amsterdam, Dutch, while his opponent Messi reached the semi-final before he Van Dijk, who has scored very impressive figures, is eliminated by Liverpool, with no rival being allowed to dodge him over 64 games, including the 2018 and 2019 Champions League finals.
Last year, Modric won the Champions League with Real Madrid and finished runner-up with Croatia when he won the World Player of the Year award.
In the women's prize went to the Danish Wolfsburg player Bernel Harder.
Messi was the first to win the prize, which was launched by `` Wifa '' in 2011, before winning it again in 2015, while it was the Spanish Andres Iniesta in 2012, and the French Frank Ribery in 2013, before being monopolized by Ronaldo in 2014, 2016 and 2017.
- Messi was the first player to win this European prize in its modern form in 2011.