HENRY, MBAPPE, IBRAHIMOVIC AND THE RISE OF FAKE FOOTBALL QUOTES

At the height of the controversy provoked by Cristiano Ronaldo walking out on the Portuguese national team, one of his former team-mates stirred the pot.

Responding to Ronaldo’s accusatory statement towards head coach Jorge Jesus, Maniche, the former Chelsea and Portugal midfielder, said his country was “stuck with a player who does not want there to be any star other than himself”.

It was damning. Nobody knew where the quote came from, but it spread like wildfire across social media and was even repeated by several news organisations.

Unfortunately, it was also completely false. Maniche had never said anything of the sort, and he was compelled to issue a public correction on his Instagram account, urging fans to be careful in the future.

This is not a unique problem. Fictitious quotations have been infecting the political discourse for at least a generation. They are nothing new in football either, but never have there been so many of them and never have they been so effective.

During the World Cup, Jurgen Klopp became one of the prominent voices in opposition to the hydration breaks. He described football as being “held hostage by executives ensconced in air-conditioned offices,” saying that the breaks were “a golden cage built for sponsors.”

Those comments were everywhere. Former players shared them, and they were published by at least one national newspaper in France, saying Klopp had spoken to German broadcaster ARD.

But Klopp worked exclusively for Magenta TV during the World Cup. He had not spoken to ARD. That was no obstacle to it going viral, though; Klopp was celebrated widely for giving Gianni Infantino’s hated invention the kicking it deserved.

It was a long summer. Kevin De Bruyne definitely did not say that new Manchester City signing Enzo Fernandez “was nowhere near my level,” Tottenham head coach Roberto De Zerbi did not publicly discuss the possibility of signing Mason Greenwood, and Thierry Henry did not lobby for Manchester City to receive more than a points deduction as a result of the independent commission’s findings of guilt over financial rule breaches.

Most recently, Ainsley Maitland-Niles was wrongly credited with an explanation for why he had not “taken the knee” ahead of Everton’s game against Chelsea. Needless to say, Maitland-Niles has so far made no public comment whatsoever.

- Authors: Sebastian Stafford-Bloor, The Athletic / The New York Times

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