At the Laureus Awards, Messi becomes the first person to get both individual and team honors
At the Laureus World Sports Awards on Monday, Argentina, the World Cup champions, took home the Team of the Year honor, while Lionel Messi, 35, was singled out for the Sportsman honor. Messi received two more awards.
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce of Jamaica won the Sportswoman award, and Christian Eriksen of Manchester United earned Comeback of the Year for his return to the game after falling on the field while playing for Denmark at Euro 2020.
Carlos Alcaraz, the second-ranked tennis player in the world, received the World Breakthrough of the Year honor at the awards, which were chosen by the Laureus Academy's elite athletes.
The PSG star Messi, who recently started exercising again after getting into trouble with his team for an unauthorized trip to Saudi Arabia, attended the awards ceremony with his wife.
He made history by being the first to receive both individual and team awards in the same calendar year.
Messi, the captain of Argentina, scored seven goals and was awarded the Golden Ball when his team won the 2022 World Cup championship in December.
As the Laureus World Sports Awards are held in Paris this year, Messi said: "This is a special honor."
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I would like to thank all of my teammates, not just from the national team but also from PSG. I am happy to be able to share everything with them since I could not have done it without them. I would like to express my gratitude to the Laureus Academy since it puts my sporting accomplishments in proper perspective and is what makes these Awards so significant to us as athletes. It's an honor to be the only recipient of the Laureus Sportsman of the Year Award for the first time after a year in which we finally won a prize we had been hunting for a while at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.
After winning the 100-meter final in July 2022, sprinter Fraser-Pryce became the first athlete to win five gold medals in a single-track event at the World Athletics Championships, earning the Sportswoman honor.
"I was thrilled to be nominated alongside such inspiring women athletes," the 36-year-old said during the presentation. "And to win this award, voted for by some of the greatest sportsmen and women of all time, is just amazing."One of the biggest honors of my career is finally holding the Laureus trophy in my hands after being nominated in this category six times.
Eriksen of Manchester United won the Comeback prize for his successful return to professional football from a heart arrest he sustained in June 2021 while playing in a Euro 2020 match.
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