For the fifth time in his career, Cristiano Ronaldo has been named the best men’s player in the world by FIFA. He’s maintained his dominance through three iterations of the award, and was named The Best FIFA Men’s Player for 2017 ahead of Lionel Messi and Neymar on Monday.
Ronaldo also won last year’s award, and is now level with Messi in this award — both have been named the world’s best player five times by FIFA.
While Ronaldo was not as dominant last season as he was the year before — he scored 42 goals, compared with 51 in the 2015-16 season — he was the top attacker on a spectacular Real Madrid team. Los Merengues are currently the defending champions of La Liga, the UEFA Champions League, the Club World Cup, the UEFA Super Cup, and the Supercopa de España.
Ronaldo has had one of his best years at international level as well. He has 11 goals in 11 appearances for Portugal in 2017, and finished his World Cup qualifying campaign with 15 goals, guiding Portugal to qualification for Russia 2018.