By EMMANUEL EGOBIAMBU

Former Manchester United defender Patrice Evra has tipped Argentine superstar Lionel Messi to win the 2021 Ballon d’Or award.

The Frenchman on Sunday took to his social media handle to congratulate Messi ahead of the award ceremony billed for Monday.

“Congratulations to @leomessi for winning another Ballon d’Or,” he wrote on Instagram alongside a photo of him and the Paris Saint Germain star who moved to France this summer.

Evra’s comment has added to the debates over who deserves the 2021 Ballon d’Or prize which would be Messi’s seventh if he wins it.

German’s Thomas Mueller had earlier backed his Bayern teammate Roberto Lewandowski to take the award after the Pole scooped the FIFA men’s player of the year in 2020.

“‘Lewy’ has to win the thing on Monday when you see the way he is playing at the moment,” Mueller said Saturday after a 1-0 win over Arminia Bielefeld which kept Bayern top of the Bundesliga.

“There is no one playing so consistently at the moment for club and country. There is no need to even talk about it.”

His coach Julian Nagelsmann told Munich newspaper Abendzeitung last month that the player, who shattered a Bundesliga record 41 goals in just 29 games last season to eclipse the long-standing mark set by the late Gerd Mueller, will win the prize.

“Robert deserves to win it because in my view he has been more unbelievably consistent than any other player,” he said.

Lewandowski, aiming for his first Ballon d’Or, has scored 30 goals this season — 25 for Bayern in 20 games in all competitions and five in six matches for Poland.

He faces a difficult task ahead as Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have combined to win 11 of the past 12 editions of the Ballon d’Or, the lone exception in 2018 when Luka Modric helped Real Madrid to another Champions League triumph and inspired Croatia to the World Cup final. (Channels TV

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