Connect with us

International Football

ELECTORAL FRAUD CLAIMS SPREAD IN FIFA AWARD TO MESSI

Published

on

After the claims by the Egyptian FA that the association’s votes in the FIFA Best Award did not count, there have been more revelations discrediting the result released by FIFA.

Sudan national team head coach, Zdravko Logarušić has also come out to discredit the verdict by FIFA.

The switched vote sheet of Sudan’s coach

In a similar vein, Nicaragua national team captain, Juan Barrera was quoted by La Prensa as saying that he did not vote, yet in the breakdown released by FIFA, he was allegedly to have voted for Lionel Messi.

“I did not vote for Messi,” Nicaragua captain Juan Barrera told La Prensa.

“Last year I voted, but this time I did not.”

The unfolding claims have raised doubts that the voting for The Best FIFA Men’s Player of the Year award might have been rigged.

Advertisement
Lionel Messi may not be the credible winner of 2019 FIFA The Best

While that of Nicaragua captain could be termed as allocation of vote, Sudan’s coach claimed his vote was switched. That amounts to fraud.

 “In my vote, I picked Mohamed Salah in first place, Sadio Mane in the second, and Kylian Mbappe in third,” Logarušić told Al-Arabiya.

“I took a photo of the voting application after I signed it with the Sudan Football Association and I don’t know what happened afterwards.” He found out that FIFA had changed his votes.

After the breakdown of votes was revealed, the results showed that Logarušić voted for Lionel Messi in first place, Virgil van Dijk in second, and Sadio Mane in third place.

This comes as a huge disappointment for Mohamed Salah as FIFA also refused to take any votes from Egypt into account which forced the Egyptian Football Association to send a protest.

Advertisement

Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

Continue Reading
Advertisement