Lionel Messi and his World Cup-winning Argentina were named Sportsman and Team of the Year at the Laureus World Sports Awards. Messi captained Argentina to victory in Qatar in December, scoring seven times and winning the Golden Ball. He is the first athlete to win both the team and individual awards in the same year. Sportswoman of the Year went to Jamaican sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, who won the women’s 100m world title at the World Athletics Championships in Oregon in July, becoming the first person to win five golds in an individual track event at the championships.
Messi expressed his gratitude for the honour, saying: “Particularly as the Laureus World Sports Awards are in Paris this year, the city that has welcomed my family since we came here in 2021. I want to thank all my team-mates, not only from the national team but also at PSG – I have achieved none of this alone and I am grateful to be able to share everything with them.”
Fraser-Pryce’s 100m gold came 13 years after her first, and the 36-year-old has more world sprint titles than any other athlete. She ran a sub-10.7-seconds 100m seven times in 2022, three more than the previous best for a female sprinter in a calendar year. She said: “I was thrilled to be nominated alongside such inspiring women athletes, and to win this award, voted for by some of the greatest sportsmen and women of all time, is just amazing. This is the sixth time I’ve been nominated in this category, so to finally hold the Laureus statuette in my hands is one of the greatest honours of my career.”
Argentina won the Team of the Year award for their World Cup victory, beating England’s Euro 2022-winning Lionesses, men’s Champions League winners Real Madrid and France’s men’s Six Nations champions. Manchester United and Denmark midfielder Christian Eriksen won Comeback of the Year following his return to football after collapsing on the pitch because of cardiac arrest during Euro 2020, while men’s tennis world number two Carlos Alcaraz was awarded World Breakthrough of the Year after a 2022 in which he won the US Open and became tennis’ youngest men’s number one. The award winners were voted for by a selection of sporting greats who make up the members of the Laureus Academy.
The full list of awards are as follows: Laureus World Sportsman of the Year award: Lionel Messi; Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year award: Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce; Laureus World Team of the Year award: Argentina men’s football team; Laureus World Breakthrough of the Year award: Carlos Alcaraz; Laureus World Comeback of the Year award: Christian Eriksen; Laureus World Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability award: Catherine Debrunner; Laureus World Action Sportsperson of the Year award: Eileen Gu; Laureus Sport for Good award: TeamUp (A programme for children displaced by war by Barcelona and Poland striker Robert Lewandowski).