Gorkhapatra Covered Nepal’s Defeat to Argentina In 1905? No, Viral Video Is Edited

At a time when the FIFA World Cup 2026 being held in North America has taken the world stage by storm, a video purportedly showing an old Gorkhapatra covering Argentina’s defeat at the hands of Nepal in a friendly football match in 1905 is going viral on TikTok.

Owned by the Nepal government, Gorkhapatra is Nepal’s first newspaper.

TikTok user @missc6274 posted a video showing an old edition of Nepal’s state-owned newspaper, Gorkhapatra, dated 1905, carrying a news titled ‘Nepal defeat Argentina 3-0 in London.” The purported news reads, “In an international friendly football match, Nepal defeated Argentina 3-0. Nepali players Khadga Bahadur scored two goals and Tika Bahadur scored one goal.  The Gorkhapatra also carries a generic black and white photo of footballers in action during a match. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Once upon a time, Nepal had defeated Argentina. History is witness.” 

The video posted on July 6 has garnered 7615 likes, 1564 users have shared it and 100 people have commented until the last count.

Fact Check /Verification

To check the veracity, Newschecker conducted a research on Nepal’s football history and found an article, posted on Nepalnews online, with a timeline of Nepal’s football history. According to the article, football was introduced in Nepal in 1921 and Nepal Football Association, which was later renamed as All Nepal Football Association, was established in 1951.

We also found articles (See here & here) confirming that Nepal’s national team played their first international away game in what was then East Pakistan at the Aga Khan Gold Cup, now renamed AFC Champions League in 1963.

Further, we checked the history of Gorkhapatra on its official website and found that the newspaper was initially published as a weekly newspaper in 1905 April 26. The newspaper made a history by publishing a photo for the first time in 1927 April.

We could not find a single credible report to support the claim about Nepal’s friendly football match with Argentina. Our findings showed a lot of anomalies in the purported Gorkhapatra article covering a 1905 football match played in London between Nepal and Argentina.

We then checked the video by using AI detection tools. Decopy AI indicated that the image is 100% likely generated by using AI. IDetect found that the image is 95.9 % likely to be created by using AI. Similarly, ZeroGPT also assessed the image as highly likely to be AI-generated.

Conclusion

 No, Nepal has never played any friendly match against global football powerhouse Argentina. The viral video allegedly showing a news report published in Gorkhapatra about Argentina’s defeat at the hands of Nepal is clearly made up.  Thus, the claim is misleading.

Sources
Gorkhapatra About
Nepalnews Online , June 26, 2026