Fact Check: Cristiano Ronaldo Did Not Make Controversial Statements About Messi

A TikTok video link (an archived link) was shared with us via WhatsApp claiming that Cristiano Ronaldo, a Portuguese professional footballer, came out and said that Lionel Messi, an Argentine professional footballer, has been paying off referees to win.

“In my opinion, I am better than Messi, and it’s not an opinion; it’s a fact. But not only that, if it weren’t for Messi to pay the Referees, he wouldn’t have won a single Ballon d’Or. So same with the World Cup he won; almost all the matches he played were rigged. So that’s why I hate him. I should have won the World Cup; I clearly deserved it,” the claim states.

This video made its way into circulation following the controversial trend of Messi’s win at the 2023 Ballon d’Or. This video, which was uploaded on October 16, 2023, got a number of engagements: over 870,000 views, 15000 likes, 2786 comments, 1687 shares, and 2786 bookmarks as of the writing of this fact check.

FACT CHECK

Using Tineye, an image verification tool, we got 10 results linking us to different news platforms. The oldest result date was January 13, 2022, and we established that all these links were leading us to an interview Cristiano Ronaldo had with Sky Sports.

Comparing the two videos, the one in question and the interview on Sky Sports’ YouTube channel, we established that these are the same videos. However, there are inconsistencies in the TikTok video, starting from the context, the lip movements, and the visual resolution around them, which weren’t clear compared to the video from Sky Sports. This clearly indicates that the TikTok video was manipulated.

Comparing lip inconsistencies: Screenshots reveal the difference in resolution. The red highlights the low resolution seen in the TikTok video, while the green showcases the clear resolution of the Sky Sports' video. — Comparing lip inconsistencies: screenshots reveal the difference in resolution. The red highlights the low resolution seen in the TikTok video, while the green showcases the clear resolution of Sky Sports’ video.

After watching and listening intently to the 21-minute-long interview on Sky Sports, we didn’t encounter any responses from Ronaldo about Messi. Christiano’s interview was primarily focused on his take and personal analysis of Manchester United’s performance, an English team he was still playing for at the time.

One of the statements in this video that raised our eyebrows is, “So same with the World Cup he won; almost all the matches he played were rigged.”

Going by the date of October 16th, 2023, when the TikTok video was published, the highlighted statement above suggests that Christiano’s interview took place after the World Cup, yet the World Cup actually began a month later, that is, in November 2022, as per the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) website. This confirms that the video was washed in terms of facts and was manipulated to fit the TikTok users’ agenda.

Flashback to the beginning: Here’s a screenshot of the original video from the YouTube channel uploaded on January 14, 2022.

Verdict

The video is not real; it is a deepfake created by manipulating features of the original interview and adding a fake voice generated with an AI tool to look appealing. Cristiano Ronaldo didn’t say that Messi rigged his wins and that he hates him.

Reagan Kiyimba

2021 Africa Check Award-winning Fact-Checker, Media Challenge Initiative Fellow class of 2020, 2022 Code For Africa and International Fact-Checking Network Climate Change Fact-Checking Fellow, 360 Digital Sherlock, trained by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab in open-source intelligence.