Real Madrid’s midfield duo angered fans by voting for Messi as number one at The Best.

As captains of Croatia and Uruguay, Luka Modric and Federico Valverde took first place, equivalent to 5 points for Lionel Messi in the Best 2024 race. The two votes of Modric and Valverde contributed to helping “El Pulga” beat Erling Haaland to win the Best Player award for the second year in a row.

Modric will leave Real after this season.

The moves by Modric and Valverde made many Real Madrid fans unhappy. On social networks, many malicious comments appeared, demanding that these two stars be kicked out of the Bernabeu stadium. “Why did you vote for Messi? I hate you two,” one fan was angry. “Get out of Real Madrid,” a second person criticized.

If either of them, Modric or Valverde, excludes Messi from the vote, Haaland will win the Best Award. Many Real fans still hate Messi because he is the symbol of Barcelona’s success.

A similar situation happened to David Alaba last year. The captain of the Austrian national team was cursed and even discriminated against by fans just because he voted for Messi in the number one spot at The Best. This year, the former Bayern star eliminated Messi from the vote to reserve three positions for Haaland, Rodri, and Kevin De Bruyne.

In addition, other captains such as Kylian Mbappe (France), Mohamed Salah (Egypt), Harry Kane (England), Robert Lewandowski (Poland), Virgil Van Dijk (Netherlands), Romelu Lukaku (Belgium), Robertson (Scotland), Jan Oblak (Slovenia), Gianluigi Donnarumma (Italy), Radamel Falcao (Colombia), and Granit Xhaka (Switzerland) all gave the number one position to Messi.

Thanks to these votes, Messi defeated Erling Haaland to win the Best Award for the second year in a row. Messi equaled Haaland’s score but won thanks to a secondary index, which is the total number of first-place votes from the national team captains (107), 43 votes more than Haaland.