Nicaraguan FA clear-up FIFA vote-rigging storm over Lionel Messi's win at The Best Awards as they admit they used the WRONG name on voting form and have fired the official responsible

On Thursday night, the Nicaraguan Football Association revealed the blunder they made which contributed to FIFA receiving accusations of vote rigging over Messi's the Best Men's Player award win. Nicaragua player Juan Barrera raised concerns about the validity of FIFA's The Best awards, claiming he did not vote for the players that were attributed to him.

The Nicaraguan FA in a statement confirmed Barrera didn't vote. They said they mistakenly used his name and signature that was on a file from a year ago, and said the person who made the error had been fired. They said it was the recently appointed captain, Manuel Rosas, who voted. Prior to the clarification from the Nicaraguan FA, a FIFA spokesperson said, 'We have checked the voting documents submitted by the Nicaraguan FA and all these documents are signed and confirmed with the official stamp of the Nicaraguan FA.

'Having compared with the vote sheets submitted by the FAs and the ones we have published we confirm that we have the right votes signed by the player/coach.

'We are asking the Nicaraguan FA to inquire on this matter.' 

Earlier on Thursday, FIFA explained why the votes of Egypt coach Shawki Ghareeb and captain Ahmed Elmohamady weren't considered. They claimed the signatures on the voting forms wwere in capital letters and thus invalid. Moreso, they say the Egyptians' voting forms were not signed by the Egyptian federation's general secretary which is mandatory. What's more, the Egyptian FA were sent two reminders to submit properly signed forms by August 19, but they only sent on after the deadline so the votes from the Egyptian FA could not be counted.

PricewaterhouseCoopers oversaw operations at the FIFA voting office to ensure transparency.