Fact Check: Old And Unrelated Clip of Footballer Kiran Chemjong Shared With Misleading Caption

Claim
Kiran Chemjong was removed from the national football team. 
Fact
Viral video is misleading.

A video allegedly showing Nepali football player Kiran Chemjong has been removed from the national team is going viral on TikTok.

TikTok user @debindra.mahat6 posted a video showing Chemjong speaking. Text superimposed on the video reads, “I don’t know I was surprised because I am busy with club football. I learned it from the news. I had been contributing for such a long time to the national team.”  Text superimposed on the video reads, “Kiran Chemjong who played for 14 years for the national team has been expelled from the national team.. Why?”   

The 23-second video posted on June 15 has garnered 32.3k likes, 561 users have shared it and 604 people have commented until the last count.

The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.

Newschecker found the claim to be misleading

Fact Check /Verification

To check the veracity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker split the video into several key frames and ran reverse searches on them. A Yandex reverse on a frame led us to a video, dated May 20, 2022, posted on the YouTube channel of Galaxy 4k Television. On checking the video, we found that the video from 0:15-minute onwards exactly matched the viral clip. 

We found that the video showed an old interview of Kiran Chemjong when he was excluded from the national team ahead of the AFC Asian Cup qualifiers in May 2022.

On digging further, we found another news article, dated May 24, 2022, posted on NepalPress online. The article titled ‘Nawayug Shrestha appointed as Nepal national football team captain’ noted that Kiran Chemjong, who was the captain of Nepal’s national football team prior to that, was expelled after he spoke in favour of 10 expelled players in May 2022.

Further, we found an article, dated June 10, 2025, posted on onlinekhabar.com. The article quoted captain Kiran Chemjong saying that the team is fully prepared to face Laos with a positive mindset, indicating that Chemjong has been leading the Nepal team until the last international match.  

We then reached out to the media head of All Nepal Football Association (ANFA), who confirmed that Kiran Chemjong has not been removed from Nepal’s national team and he recently led the national team during the AFC Asian Cup Qualifiers match against Laos at the New Laos National Stadium.

Thus, our findings clearly indicaated that the viral video shows an old clip of Chemjong talking to media when he was surprisingly excluded from the national team ahead of the AFC Asian Cup qualifiers in May 2022.

Conclusion

Nepali footballer Kiran Chemjong is still heading Nepal’s national football team and he has not been removed from the national team. The viral clip shows an old and unrelated clip as recent with a false text.

Result: Misleading

Sources
Galaxy 4K /YouTube , May 20, 2022
Nepal Press May 24, 2022
Onlinekhabar.comJune 10, 2025

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