Lionel Messi’s role in Bar-celona’s treble-winning 2014/15 campaign has been acknowledged with the Best Player in Europe Award – the second time the forward has been honoured in the accolade’s five-year history, uefa.com reported yesterday.

The Argentine accepted the trophy from UEFA president Michel Platini at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco.

Messi, recipient of the inaugural prize in 2011, finished ahead of Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo and club-mate Luis Suarez in a live poll of 54 journalists who selected their favourite from the three-man shortlist announced on August 12.

Messi said: “We’re a unified squad who worked very hard to achieve the goals we did.

“I’m very happy and I would like to thank my team-mates – without them I wouldn’t have achieved this.”

Positions four to ten were already established before yesterday’s second poll and re-sulted as follows:

4. Buffon (Juventus) 24 points; 5. Neymar (Barcelona) 23; 6. Hazard (Chelsea) 21; 7. Pirlo (Juventus) 12; 8. Vidal (Juventus) 11; 9. Tevez (Juventus) 8; 10. Pogba (Juventus) 5.

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