Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp believes Virgil van Dijk should be awarded the Ballon d’Or as he had the best season last time out.
Van Dijk has been tipped for the gong, which will be awarded on Monday December 2 in Paris.
The Liverpool ace guided his side to the Champions League trophy last season with the Reds also finishing second in the Premier League.
Liverpool knocked out Lionel Messi’s Barcelona in the last four of the Champions League, though Messi is again in the running for the prestigious gong.
Messi has won the award five times but Klopp believes Van Dijk should pip him this time, as long as it is judged on the previous season.
“If you give the Ballon d’Or to the best player of this generation then you should give it always to Lionel Messi,” Klopp said. “That’s how it is.
“But if you give it to the best player of last season, then it was Virgil van Dijk. I don’t know exactly how it will work but that is how I see it.
“The best player of all? That’s Lionel. Best player of last season? That’s Virgil. We will see.”
Messi has not won the Ballon d’Or since 2015 and finished outside the top three in 2018 for the first time since 2006.
Luka Modric lifted the award 12 months ago and Messi acknowledges how special it is to do so.
“It is a beautiful recognition and perhaps the most special was the first,” he told Otro.
“It is something that comes from the collective. Without having achieved all the collective successes that we had to achieve, I wouldn’t have been able to get these individual awards.”