Messi gets top honours again

Argentine Lionel Messi beat Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk and five-time winner Cristiano Ronaldo to win the best FIFA player of the year award for a record sixth time on Monday.

Messi, who won the Spanish La Liga title with Barcelona last season as well as the European golden boot, last won the award in 2015.

U. S. co- captain Megan Rapinoe won the women’s top award after helping her country to the World Cup title this year.

Hungary and Slovakia will play their next Euro 2020 qualifiers behind closed doors after both national federations were sanctioned by European soccer’s governing body UEFA on Monday for racist behaviour by their supporters.

Riot police were called into action in Budapest after trouble erupted in the stands during the Euro 2020 Group D qualifier between the teams on Sept. 9, which Slovakia won 2-1.

Slovakia’s next UEFA match is a Euro 2020 qualifier at home to Wales on Oct. 10, while Hungary’s qualifier against visiting Azerbaijan on Oct. 13 will also be played behind closed doors.

Two workers from a British CCTV firm were jailed on Monday for accessing graphic mortuary footage, later circulated on social media, of the body of the late Argentine soccer player Emiliano Sala, who was killed in a plane crash in January.

After Sala’s body was recovered, Sherry Bray, 48, and Christopher Ashford, 62, accessed footage of his body in the mortuary and the images later appeared on social media.

Bray, who pleaded guilty in August to three counts of computer misuse and perverting the course of justice, was jailed for 14 months at Swindon Crown Court.

Ashford, who admitted three counts of computer misuse, was sentenced to five months in prison.