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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Sports fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about sports. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

1,766 published reviews in this topic

Factcrescendo Sri LankaSports

Football Fans From Kerala, Placed A Giant Cutout Of Messi Under The Sea!!

Publisher’s rating: Explainer

Factcrescendo Sri Lanka examined viral posts claiming that people from Kerala had placed a Lionel Messi cutout among ocean coral reefs. Its review says it used keyword searches to find related news reports and identifies the location as Kavaratti Island in Lakshadweep—not the state of Kerala. The review describes Lakshadweep as a union territory west of Kerala, while noting its close ties to the state and the widespread use of Malayalam there. The reporting cited in the review attributes the installation to Lakshadweep vlogger Mohammed Swadikh. It quotes his account that he decided to install the cutout after Argentina’s semi-final win over Croatia, and says he told India Today that the people involved were Lakshadweep locals, not Keralites. The review also reports that the cutout was about four metres high, made from waterproof materials, and placed at roughly 100 feet deep at a coral reef called the Wall of Wonder, with help from the Lakshadweep Scuba Adventure team. The review’s conclusion is therefore that the underwater Messi cutout was real, but the claim misidentified where it was installed and who took part. It describes the participants as a group in Lakshadweep, organized by Swadikh, rather than football fans from Kerala.

FACTLYSports

Video of Messi hugging his mother after winning the final match of FIFA World Cup 2022

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

The claim concerns a video shared after Argentina won the final of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. It identifies the woman Lionel Messi hugs in that video as his mother, Celia María Cuccittini. FACTLY’s review says the woman in the viral video is instead Antonia Farías, a cook for Argentina’s national football team. The review’s conclusion is qualified: Messi did embrace his mother after the victory, but the viral video shows a different woman. To identify the woman, the review says it compared the viral video with images of Celia and searched for reporting from Argentine media outlets Los Andes and Clarín. It reports that those outlets identified the woman as Farías, and that the review also compared her appearance in the video with other social-media images of her. FACTLY says those comparisons supported identifying her as the team cook. The review distinguishes the two women using details from images of the celebrations: it describes Celia as wearing a purple jersey and says her left forearm did not have a tattoo. It cites Reuters and Getty images for those details. Thus, the claim is misleading because it attributes the embrace in the viral video to Messi’s mother, even though the review says that embrace was with Farías; it does not claim Messi never embraced his mother after the win.

Factcrescendo Sri LankaSports

https://srilanka.factcrescendo.com/2022/12/21/2010-image-shared-as-maradona-hugging-messi-after-2022-victory/

Publisher’s rating: False

The review examines a social-media image presented as showing Diego Maradona congratulating Lionel Messi after Argentina won the 2022 World Cup. It notes that Maradona had died in 2020, so he could not have been present for that victory. The review’s conclusion is that the image was miscaptioned, not a photograph of a post-victory celebration. [S1]

Factcrescendo Sri LankaSports

Is this Lionel Messi's mothers he's hugging after FIFA final victory?

Publisher’s rating: False

The claim concerns a video circulating after Argentina’s 2022 FIFA World Cup final victory. It identified the woman in a blue-and-white Argentina jersey who runs to embrace Lionel Messi as his mother, Celia Maria Cuccittini. Fact Crescendo’s review concludes that identification is wrong: “The woman in the blue-and-white jersey who ran to hug Messi on the field was not Messi’s mother.” The review also clarifies that Messi’s mother was present and embraced him separately, wearing a violet Argentina jersey. To check the identification, the review says its team searched for an image of Cuccittini from the day of the final and compared it with the woman in the video. It reports differences in jersey colour and hair, and notes that the woman in the clip has a forearm tattoo that is not visible on Cuccittini’s arm. These comparisons support the review’s conclusion that the woman in the viral clip was not Messi’s mother; they do not establish the identity of the woman on their own. The review discusses two possible identities for the woman. It says some social-media users thought she might be the mother of Messi’s teammate Sergio Agüero, and that local Argentine news agencies identified her as Argentine team cook Antonia Farías. But it explicitly cautions that there was “no official confirmation” that she was Agüero’s mother. Its firm finding is therefore about who the woman was not—not a definitive, independently confirmed identification of who she was.

dpaSports

Elon Musk was in werkelijkheid niet aanwezig bij de finale van het WK voetbal in Qatar.

Publisher’s rating: De bewering is misleidend. Alles wijst erop dat Elon Musk wel degelijk bij de finale van het WK voetbal in Qatar aanwezig was. Verschillende media tonen beelden van Musk in het stadion. Musk tweette zelf uitvoerig over de wedstrijd. De streep in zijn nek is te verklaren door een ketting die hij draagt. De kleurverschillen tussen gezicht en nek worden veroorzaakt door lichtval en schaduwwerking.

El Detector / Univision NoticiasSports

La Torre Eiffel se iluminó con los colores de la bandera de Argentina para celebrar al campeón de Qatar 2022.

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim concerns a specific event: that the Eiffel Tower was illuminated in Argentina’s national colors after Argentina beat France in the Qatar 2022 World Cup final. The review says the tower’s administrator, the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, denied that this happened on Sunday, December 18. In an email to the fact-checkers, the administrator said the tower was not lit in Argentina’s colors that night and that its lights went out at the usual time, 23:45. The review also investigated the image circulating on Facebook and Twitter. It reports that a reverse-image search with TinEye found photographs of the tower in blue with the European Union’s 12 gold stars, rather than an original image of an Argentina-colored display. Comparing the viral image with the EU-lit tower, the reviewers noticed EU stars still visible among the rays of the sun added to resemble Argentina’s emblem. They concluded that the viral image had been manipulated by superimposing that sun onto a photograph of the tower lit in EU colors. The review identifies earlier instances of the EU lighting as the source image’s context: it says the tower had been lit in those colors for occasions when France held the presidency of the Council of the European Union, including 2008 and the first half of 2022. Taken together, the administrator’s direct denial and the image comparison address both the claimed event and the misleading photograph used to depict it.

FACTLYSports

A photo of Cristiano Ronaldo watching the Argentina-France FIFA World Cup 2022 final

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

FACTLY examined a viral image said to show Cristiano Ronaldo watching the Argentina-France FIFA World Cup 2022 final. Its review identifies the image as a much older photograph: it says it was taken in Turin on 2 October 2018, when Ronaldo attended a UEFA Champions League Group H match between Juventus and BSC Young Boys at Allianz Stadium. That event and date do not match the claimed World Cup final setting. [S1]

Factcrescendo Sri LankaSports

Fans Throwing Eggs At The Brazil Team After Their Elimination At FIFA World Cup?

Publisher’s rating: False

The claim concerned a video circulating after Brazil’s elimination from the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Its captions presented the scene as angry fans welcoming the national team home. Fact Crescendo’s review instead identifies the clip as showing an earlier incident involving a bus carrying Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The review states that it found no reports of fans throwing eggs at the football team after its 2022 elimination. [S1: “After the top-ranked and much anticipated strong Brazil team’s elimination once again in the quarterfinal stages of a FIFA World Cup, a video showing a group of angry fans throwing eggs at a bus is widely circulating on social media, claiming that it shows how angry Brazilian fans welcomed Brazil’s National football team after their elimination from the FIFA World Cup 2022.”; “We ran a keyword to search for relevant reports of incidents where fans threw eggs at the Brazilian football team. However, we could not find any reports after the elimination of the Brazilian team from the FIFA World Cup 2022.”] The review says its reverse-image search led to the same video on YouTube, where it had been published on 27 March 2018. It reports that the video showed citizens of Paraná throwing eggs at a bus carrying Lula, not football players. [S1: “We started our investigation by a reverse image search on Google, whose results led us to the same video published on YouTube on 27 March 2018. According to the caption of the video, it shows the citizens of Parana who were throwing eggs at a bus carrying Lula, who was the former President of Brazil.”] The review further describes reports of the incident as involving protestors in Foz do Iguaçu, in Paraná, who mistook the bus for part of Lula’s convoy during an election campaign. That distinct 2018 setting and the video’s earlier online provenance contradict the claim that the clip depicts a reaction to Brazil’s 2022 World Cup exit. [S1: “During the election campaign, the protestors had attacked the bus by mistaking it as a part of Lula’s convoy.”; “The video dates back to 2018, showing the citizens of Parana throwing eggs at a bus carrying Lula, the former President of Brazil.”]