CLAIM
A photo is going viral on social media with the claim that it shows a photographer crying looking at footballer Andre Gomes’s ankle getting broken on the field during a match. The photo, which is a collage, claims to show the photographer in question crying during the match.
Many people shared the collage with the same claim on Facebook.
Everton midfielder Andre Gomes’s right ankle got dislocated after he was tripped by Tottenham Hotspur's Son Heung-min during a football match on 3 November.
TRUE OR FALSE?
The claim with which the photo is being shared is false. While the photo of Gomes being tripped is real, that of the photographer is from a different incident which happened much earlier and has been taken out of context.
WHAT WE FOUND
On doing a reverse image search of the photograph using the search engine Yandex, we found a Facebook post which said it was an Iraqi photographer who became emotional during the AFC Asia Cup while his team went down to Qatar 1-0 in the round of 16.
The photograph was shared on 24 January 2019 on the official Facebook page of AFC Asia Cup.
The same photo was also uploaded on their Twitter handle.
On going through the comments on the Twitter thread, we came across a tweet by a Mohammed Sadre which had a photo of the same photographer which showed him wearing an outfit with the Iraqi flag on it.
While looking for news reports about the same, we came across an article which identified the photographer as Mohammed al-Azzawi. On looking up his name on Twitter, we came across a tweet by Steven Nabi, a TV correspondent at Alhurra News, which confirmed the same information.
Nabi’s tweet was dated 24 January 2019 as well.
Upon looking up the keywords ‘Iraqi photographer Asian Cup’ on Twitter, we came across a tweet which had both the photos being used by the viral post, this time dated to 28 January 2019.
Therefore, the post doing the rounds on social media has been photoshopped and is being shared with a false claim. The image of the photographer crying is old and has been taken out of context.
PHOTO VIRAL EARLIER AS WELL
It is interesting to note that the same image of the photographer crying had also gone viral earlier, with a photo of cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni being run out during the World Cup semi-finals between India and New Zealand held in May-July 2019.
This claim has been debunked by The Quint.
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