New Delhi: Spanish sports daily Marca pulled a neat trick on its readers on Friday after it claimed that footballing legend Zinedine Zidane was the original recipient of the FIFA Player of the Year award, and not Italy's World Cup winning captain Fabio Cannavaro.
It further stated that football's world governing body made a voting blunder that cost Zidane an unprecedented fourth World Player of the Year award on the Day of the Innocents, Spain's version of the April Fool's Day.
FIFA however, was quick to find its feet after the jocular claim.
"Every country and region has its own time-honoured customs and traditions, many of them involving practical jokes. With the advent of the internet, such traditions can also create quite some confusion," said a FIFA statement.
"The Spanish sports paper Marca yesterday published a story on its website regarding the FIFA World Player. Marca alleged that FIFA had recounted the votes after admitting errors and would give the award to Zidane instead of
Cannavaro. This story is, of course, completely invented and a joke.
"As a matter of fact, Marca was quite successful - not in Spain but abroad. While no Spanish media contacted us, the FIFA Media Office still received quite a few phone calls.
"The honour of the first such call fell to a Norwegian journalist which proves how much the internet has also done for the promotion of cross-border coverage of international football. Following closely were several Italian journalists
and an assortment of international media," the statement added.
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