Robert Lewandowski THE VERY BEST Men's Player in 2020

FIFA has crowned Robert Lewandowski THE VERY BEST Men's Player in 2020, with the Bayern Munich striker beating Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo to the accolade.

For greater than a decade, the Argentine and the Portuguese have dominated the FIFA awards, having won 11 out from the past 12 Player of the entire year titles between them since 2008, with only Luka Modric disrupting their reign in 2018.

This year, however, both greats were beaten by Lewandowski after his record-breaking campaign helped inspire Bayern Munich to an historic treble last season, with the club claiming the Bundesliga, the German Cup and the UEFA Champions League titles.

The Poland striker also won the Golden Boot award in each competition - something neither Messi nor Ronaldo were able to achieve up to now - and finally netted an unbelievable 55 goals in only 47 appearances.

Lewandowski claimed FIFA's The Best accolade after already being named the 2019/20 UEFA Men's Player of the Year. He also looked to be always a shoo-in for the prestigious Ballon d'Or title before award organisers France Football scrapped this year's ceremony because of this of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Remember, FIFA's THE VERY BEST awards reward the best player in each category because of their achievements through the period from 20 July 2019 to 7 October 2020.

"The winners of the greatest FIFA Men's Player will be selected by an international jury comprising the current coaches of most men's national teams (one per team), the existing captains of all men's national teams (one per team), one professional journalist from each territory represented by a national team, and fans from around the globe registered on FIFA.com," FIFA explained.

"Each one of the four sets of voters within the jury gets the same electoral weight regardless of some of the number of voters in those groups (i.e. the votes of the coaches, the captains, the professional journalists and the fans shall each constitute one quarter of the poll, notwithstanding the quantity of voters in each group).

"Each member of the jury will be requested to nominate, in decreasing order of merit, the three players whom, in accordance with the criteria set out in articles 2 and 3 above, they consider most worth the respective award. The three players nominated by each jury member will receive five points, three points or one point respectively, and the award is bestowed upon the player who receives the most scoring points."