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.
Claim
Cristiano Ronaldo praised Nepali women’s football game.
Fact
Viral video shows Ronaldo’s conversation about his football career with Rio Ferdinand.
A video purportedly showing world renowned footballer cristiano Ronaldo praising the football game of Nepali women in the SAFF Championship 2024 is going viral on TikTok.
Nepal reached the final of the SAFF Women’s Championship after a tense semi-final match against India at the Dasharath Stadium, Kathmandu on October 27.
Against this backdrop, TikTok user @since_musically4 posted video shows an interview of Cristiano Ronaldo. The video also carries an advertisement of the semifinal football match between Nepal and India as part of Women SAFF Championship Match 2024. The advertisement also carries photos of Nepali team’s skipper Sabitra Bhandari and Indian team’s captain Bala Devi. In the alleged interview with English sub-title, Ronaldo says, “I watched match yesterday. The way of playing football by Nepali girls it was so amazing. It was really hard for Nepal but at the end they did it. My Nepali fan and supporters congratulations on your victory.” Another person talking to Cristiano Ronaldo says, “India also tried their best to get victory against Nepal I appreciate on that.”
The video posted on October 28 has garnered 184.9k likes, 9885 users have liked it and 2311 people have commented until the last count.
Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the veracity of the claim, Newschecker took a key frame from the viral video and ran a reverse image search on Google. The results pointed us to several videos (see here & here) featuring Christiano Ronaldo.
We checked a video, dated Sept 28, 2024, posted on the YouTube channel named UR Christiano, and found that the video frames exactly matched the viral video. However, Christiano Ronaldo was saying, “I had to suffer a lot in that moment, which is why I am more capable of dealing with the bad moments.”
Taking clues from the video, we dug further and came across another video, dated August 28, 2024, posted on the YouTube channel named UR Christiano Ronaldo. On checking the video, we found that the clip was made from Ronaldo’s conversation with his former Manchester United teammate Rio Gavin Ferdinand.
Thus our findings clearly indicated that the viral clip was made by using AI-generated audio clip on top of a clip showing Rio Ferdinand’s conversation with Christiano Ronaldo shot in August earlier this year.
Conclusion
No, the viral video doesn’t show Cristiano Ronaldo talking about Nepali women’s football in SAFF Women’s Championship. The viral video is created by using a false audio of Cristiano Ronaldo and Rio Ferdinand and an unrelated poster of the Nepal-India match as part of SAFF Women’s Championship.
Result: False
Sources
Omalla/YouTube, Sept 6, 2024
UR Christiano /YouTube, Aug 28, 2024
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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.
