Fact-Check: Viral Video Does Not Show Pep Guardiola Ignoring ‘Israeli Official'

Pep Guardiola snubbed former Crystal Palace manager Alan Smith, not an Israeli official.

The man in the video is Alan Smith, former Crystal Palace manager.

(Source: Facebook/Altered by The Quint)

A video showing Premier League club Manchester City's manager, Josep 'Pep' Guardiola, ignoring one man while shaking hands with many others is going viral on social media.

What are users claiming?: Those sharing the video have expressed "respect" for Guardiola for subtly showing support for the Palestinian cause, claiming that the man he snubbed was an Israeli official.

An archived version of this post can be seen here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

(Archived versions of more posts on social media can be seen here, here, and here.)

Is it true?: No, the man Guardiola snubbed is former manager of Premier League club Crystal Palace FC, Alan Smith.

• The video dates back to August 2023, when Guardiola and his team went to collect their runners-up medals after losing against Arsenal in the English Football Association's (FA) Community Shield.

How did we find out the truth?: We ran a reverse image search on one part of the video using Google Lens.

• This led us to a 2023 report on British tabloid Daily Star's website, which carried screenshots from the viral video.

• Its caption identified the man who was ignored as "Football consultant Alan Smith."

The man was identified as one Alan Smith.

(Source: Daily Star/Altered by The Quint)

We ran a search using both their names as keywords, which showed us a similar report by SPORTbible.

This report from 2023 carried the same visuals.

(Source: SPORTbible/Screenshot)

• It mentioned that Guardiola appeared "to ignore former Crystal Palace and Wycombe Wanderers manager Alan Smith," adding that the former also obstructed some City players "to stop them from shaking hands with the 76-year-old."

• When asked about why it might have happened by an X (formerly Twitter) user, Smith quipped, "...think he thought I was Arsenal???"

• We noticed that Smith had also commented on a post quoting the viral claim, calling it "mistaken identity" and laughing it off.

Alan Smith responded to a post dismissing the viral claim.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

• Social media users had also shared clips of the incident back in August 2023.

Conclusion: A video of Pep Guardiola ignoring Alan Smith is being shared to falsely claim that he ignored an Israeli official.

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