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The final whistle for the 2026 World Cup has blown, with Spain crowned world champions after beating Argentina 1-0 in the final which took place New Jersey.
Yet while the football is over, another tournament played out online with a slew of AI-generated videos, fabricated images and misleading clips spreading alongside the biggest matches, often racking up millions of views before being debunked.
The posts served a range of purposes, from humour and political messaging to criticism of players and their teams. Other publications were seemingly crafted to generate clicks and advertising revenue.
The Cube, Euronews’ fact-checking team, took a look at some of the false and misleading content doing the rounds.
AI’s favourite player: Erling Haaland
No player embodied the rise of AI-generated content in this tournament more than Norwegian striker Erling Haaland.
Perhaps the most viral was a video of him glancing up at his reflection in a restaurant and flinching. It garnered more than 30 million views in a single day, but it turned out to be a result of a face swap applied to a video originally posted by a Chinese content creator.
However, it didn’t seem to matter for fans of the player, with the video going on to gain a further 10 million views across social media.
Putting words into players’ mouths
Nevertheless, not all false posts about Haaland were harmless.
One video on X showed the Manchester City striker speaking after Norway’s defeat to England on 11 June, with the caption “I’m going to support Argentina because England illegally took their territory” attached to it.
Spanish subtitles in the video repeated the same statement, referring to Argentina’s claim over the Falkland Islands, a British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic.
This clip garnered thousands of views, but the caption is untrue.
In reality, the post-match interview of Haaland shows that when asked by the media who he would support for the rest of the tournament, he replied: “I think I have some of my [Manchester] City teammates in England, and in France, and Spain, so of course I want England to do well.”
“I’ve been supporting … I think I got an England national team jersey before I got a Norway jersey when I was little, so of course I want England to do well because it’s a nice country and it’s a nice t-shirt,” he said in the clip.
Haaland is not the only player to fall victim to videos that put false claims in his mouth.
After the Norway-England match, England midfielder Jude Bellingham was quoted in viral posts as saying, “Messi is my idol” and “FIFA is rigged and corrupt.” However, recordings of his post-match interviews show he made neither statement.
Claims tournament rigged for Argentina spark wave of fakes
One of the biggest conspiracy theories running throughout the World Cup alleged that the tournament was rigged for Argentina to win. It gained mass traction on social media, reaching a wide cross-generational audience.
“My two teenage boys are convinced the World Cup has been rigged for Argentina”, wrote one LinkedIn user.
The narrative intensified after Argentina’s game against Egypt on 7 July, in which they won 3-2.
During the match, a series of referee decisions were viewed as controversial, in turn leading Egypt’s Football Association to file a formal complaint with FIFA — accusing the match’s referee, François Letexier, and his team of making “serious refereeing mistakes”.
From there, theories began to spread beyond refereeing decisions, with social media users tying in unrelated events and public figures to argue that Argentina was receiving external support.
One of these alleged external backers was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In an interview on The Mojo Podcast, Netanyahu described Argentina as a “very good team”, stating that it was not Argentinian forward Lionel Messi, but in fact the country’s President Javier Milei who had swayed his support. He described Milei as a “great friend” of Israel.
An AI-generated image of Netanyahu wearing an Argentinian shirt during the side’s match against Austria was used to support this claim. It gained thousands of views on X but was ultimately AI-generated. Netanyahu did not attend the match.
Other posts focused on Messi himself, with users framing his reported ties to Israel as further evidence of rigging.
“Why did Messi visit Israel twice in 2022, the SAME YEAR that Argentina won the World Cup?”, claimed one user in an X post with more than 80,000 views.
Despite this, these claims were not backed up by any publicly available official sources, while accounts relaying them provided no concrete evidence.
Fabricated evidence instead emerged, such as an AI-generated image of FIFA President Gianni Infantino injecting performance-enhancing drugs into Messi’s arm.
Another image, which gained thousands of views on X, alleges that the referee for the Argentina-England game, Ismail Elfath, had asked for a photo with Messi after the match.
But the image is actually from 2022, showcasing a moment which took place before a match between Argentina and France.
Another viral clip, which gained 8 million views on X alone, appeared to show Messi feigning injury against Switzerland.
However, visual inconsistencies, such as Swiss players’ incorrect kits revealed that the video was in fact AI-generated.
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