Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
Argentina won the FIFA World Cup title edging out defending champions France on penalties after a thrilling final match at Lusail Stadium in Qatar. Argentina’s captain Lionel Messi finally got his hands on football’s greatest prize, crowning his record-breaking career. Against this backdrop, a video showing an interview of Argentinian star Messi in which he allegedly expressed his disappointment at not winning the golden boot at FIFA World Cup is going viral among Nepali TikTok users. Newschecker found the video to be false.
The South American nation, which has produced some of the world’s top footballers including Diego Maradona, had to wait for 36 years to become the World Champions for a third time. The match turned out to be the best World Cup final ever with both sides locked at 2-2 at the end of the regular 90-minute time, and the extra time also saw one goal each from both sides, forcing the match into the penalty shootout.
TikTok user @ghamsyame posted a video, showing an interview of Argentinian star Lionel Messi. In the video, the interviewing journalist is heard congratulating Lionel Messi for winning the world cup trophy. He goes on to ask what Messi’s future plans are after becoming the world champion. In response Messi is heard saying, “To tell you the truth honestly, I am not so happy by winning the World Cup. What should I do with his bludgeon? Actually, I needed the golden boot but that was taken by Mbappe.” Text superimposed on the video reads, “Why is Messi brother dissatisfied even after winning the world cup?”
The video posted on December 19 has garnered 281.1k likes and 13.7k shares and 4,971 people have commented on it until the time of publishing this article.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the veracity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker took a keyframe from the viral video and conducted a reverse image search which threw up several results. We checked an article, carrying an image whose frames matched the viral video, published in archysports.com. On checking the article, we found that the image of Messi being interviewed was from TyCSports.
Taking it as a clue, we conducted a search on YouTube using keywords ‘TYC Sports Messi with world cup’ which yielded several videos. We checked a video whose thumbnail image exactly matched the frames of the viral video. On checking the video published on the YouTube Channel named ‘BlaugranaVideos’, we found the frames exactly matched. We found that the interview was in Spanish Language with English subtitles.
On watching the video subtitles, we found that Messi was asked, “How long have we waited for this image, and the entire country celebrating this?” Messi replies, “Crazy, it was made to be desired but the most beautiful thing is, look how beautiful it is. The truth is very impressive. I wanted it very much. I just said that God was going to give it to me and I was sure and I had a feeling that this was the moment. We suffered a lot and now is the time to enjoy it.”
However, nowhere could we find that Messi was not happy to win the world cup, and he was actually looking to win the golden boot, which is awarded to the highest goal scorer of the world cup.
Conclusion
The video purporting to show Argentine star Lionel Messi’s interview in which he allegedly expressed his dissatisfaction for his failure to win the golden boot and he is not so happy to win the world cup is false. The video is edited by laying a false Nepali audio on top.
Result: False
Sources
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
