Just hours before the FIFA World Cup final, in which France emerged victorious with a 4-2 win over Croatia, a video showing hundreds of Croatian fans supposedly cheering for their team in their country went viral on social media.
Except, this video was not from Croatia, but from the San Fermin celebrations held every year in July in Spain's Pamplona, as pointed out by SM Hoax Slayer. The highlight of the San Fermin festival is the running of the bulls.
Here’s a video from the San Fermin celebrations that happen in Spain.
The videos shared on Twitter and Facebook were accompanied by these messages: “Croatia right now...” and “This is happening in Croatia right now. This is crazy.” On Twitter, one of the video posts had received more than 10 million views and over 99,000 retweets. Meanwhile, on Facebook, one of the posts had received more than a million views and at least 16,000 shares.
This is not the only fake story around the FIFA World Cup. Earlier, a video post showing a team of footballers praying and singing in a hotel room claiming that they belonged to the Croatian national team had gone viral on social media. But as it turned out, the players belonged to a Brazilian club football team.
Another video that went viral during the World Cup football season claimed that the angry Brazilian fans hurled stones and eggs at a bus after their team's exit with a 2-1 loss to Belgium in the quarter-finals. The video was also carried by prominent Indian news websites. However, once again, the video was taken from another unrelated incident that happened much before the World Cup.
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