World Football Governing Body FIFA has denied claims that votes for Lionel Messi to win the Best Player Award were rigged.
Lionel Messi walked away with the best men’s player accolade at the glitzy ceremony in Milan on Monday, pipping Cristiano Ronaldo and Virgil van Dijk to the award.
Given Van Dijk’s remarkable season at Liverpool and Ronaldo’s excellent campaign at Juventus – Messi winning the award was met with a degree of surprise.
FIFA determines the best players based on the votes of national team coaches, captains as well as a journalist from each country.
But Messi’s claim to the honour has been thrown into doubt following after Egyptian football association and Nicaragua’s captain Juan Barrera raised concerns over the authenticity of the ballots – citing uncounted or misallocated votes.
Egypt’s association called on FIFA to explain why the votes of Coach Shawki Ghareeb and captain Ahmed Elmohamady were not taken into account.
Ghareeb and Elmohamady – who both opted for Mohamed Salah as their top choice – are not mentioned in FIFA’s publication of official votes that was published after the award ceremony.
The Egyptian FA claim they officially sent their votes to FIFA on August 15, four days before the deadline.
On Thursday, the governing body provided a bizarre explanation as to why the Egyptian’s votes weren’t included – claiming the signatures on the voting forms were in capital letters and thus invalid.