Barcelona forward Lionel Messi had featured in the top three for 11 straight years. He was runner-up in 2007 and 2008 before winning the title five times
Cristiano Ronaldo
Lionel Messi has been omitted from the shortlist for FIFA player of the year award, which features Cristiano Ronaldo, Luka Modric and Mohamed Salah. Barcelona forward Messi had featured in the top three for 11 straight years. He was runner-up in 2007 and 2008 before winning the title for the first of five years in 2009.
Portugal and Juventus forward Ronaldo, like Messi, is a five-time winner, and has reached the top three alongside Real Madrid midfielder Modric and Salah, the Liverpool forward. Messi's subsequent wins came in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2015, while Ronaldo won the title in 2008, 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017.
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Ronaldo won a third successive Champions League title with Real Madrid in 2017-18, finishing as top scorer in the competition. Modric helped Croatia to the World Cup final, which France won, while Salah's goals propelled Liverpool to the Champions League final, which Real won.
Meanwhile, France's World Cup winning boss Didier Deschamps, Zlatko Dalic and Zinedine Zidane were nominated for coach of the year award. Deschamps became the third man to win the World Cup as a player and coach with victory over Dalic's Croatia in July's final in Russia.
Zidane was a teammate of Deschamps when France first won the World Cup in 1998 and is nominated after guiding Real Madrid to a third Champions League in his two-and-a-half year reign at the Bernabeu before stepping down in June.
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