{"id":18000,"date":"2024-03-29T15:32:07","date_gmt":"2024-03-29T14:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/?p=18000"},"modified":"2024-03-30T17:21:51","modified_gmt":"2024-03-30T16:21:51","slug":"a-doctored-image-used-to-claim-barcelonas-footballer-is-20-year-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/a-doctored-image-used-to-claim-barcelonas-footballer-is-20-year-old\/","title":{"rendered":"A doctored image used to claim Barcelona\u2019s footballer is 20-year-old"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Claim<\/strong>: A Facebook post<\/a> has claimed that Barcelona Football Club\u2019s wonder kid, Lamine Yamal lied about his age. The post suggested that he will be 20 years old in July 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Verdict:<\/strong> False; a Google Reverse Image search on the  image used in the post  indicated that the document was doctored to change his year of birth from 2007 to 2005,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full Text<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A Facebook page, Football Farm<\/a> posted a document<\/a> claiming that an investigation has been launched to determine the age of Barcelona football Club’s Lamine Yamal. The document declared the footballer, whose official age is 16 years but would be 17 by July, was born in 2005 instead of 2007 known to the public. It suggested that his age is 19 years, with a few months to be 20.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The document was purported to be from the Catalan Football Federation<\/a> (FCF)  showing the footballer’s personal details when Barcelona FC signed him during the 2013\/2014 football season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The post was captioned:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cSources confirm an official investigation on Lamine Yamal’s age is pending. Timelines and school records verify he is soon to be 20 years old, not 16 as previously claimed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It added that the document which showed when FC Barcelona signed Lamine Yamalin in 2013 indicated his age was 8 years old, thereby confirming the speculation that he would be turning 20 years of age in 2024 instead of the 17 years he officially claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The claim was also found on X<\/a> and Facebook<\/a> claiming the same narrative of the footballer falsified his age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another X account claimed<\/a> that an \u201cOld newspaper confirms he was 10 years old in 2015, meaning he will turn 19 and not 17 this year.  Barcelona have been committing age fraud!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DUBAWA decided to investigate this claim because of its potential to misinform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Verification<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A Google Reverse Image search churned several online posts mentioning the topic. An article by a Spanish publication, 101 Noticias<\/a>, detailed Lamine\u2019s journey into a professional footballer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article, published in 2023, also contained the shared document. However, the document had the player\u2019s date of birth as 13-07-2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The document was published in the article in 2023, but the one shared with the date of birth of 13-07-2005 appeared in March 2024 to push the narrative of Yamal being two years older.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This shows that the latter was produced by changing the 7 (in 2007) on the former to 5 (to read 2005) to push the narrative that he reduced his age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, a fact check published by Maldita.es<\/a> concluded that the second claim that an old newspaper confirmed Lamine was 10 years old in 2015 was false. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact check noted that the photograph in the newspaper was from a publication from Newspaper Sport in December 2017. It added, “reference to his 10 years does not contradict Yamal’s age, 16 years in 2024.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A check on the Facebook<\/a> handle of Barcelona also corroborated that the player is 16 years of age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The club made a post<\/a> on July 13, 2023, to celebrate the player reaching 16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, a tweet posted<\/a> on the club’s X handle on January 22 stated that \u201cLamine Yamal, at the age of 16 years and 192 days, and Pau Cubars\u00ed (16 years and 364 days), made history by starting in the first 11 that featured two U17s, a first in this century.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The claim that FC Barcelona\u2019s player, Lamine Yamal, falsified his age to be two years younger is false, as the materials used to accompany the claim were doctored and falsified to give credence to the false information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This report is produced for the DUBAWA 2024 Kwame Karikari Fact-Checking Fellowship in partnership with Daily Trust Newspaper to facilitate the ethos of truth in journalism and enhance media literacy in Nigeria.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The document was purported to be from the Catalan Football Federation (FCF)\u00a0 showing the footballer’s personal details when Barcelona FC signed him during the 2013\/2014 football season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"hannibal_claim_source":"","hannibal_source_label":"","hannibal_card_color":"blue","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_bluesky_share_type":"","_mastodon_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[437,1571,3815,3704],"tags":[4119,323,4121,4117,115,4118,4120,486,60],"verdict":[],"ppma_author":[4129],"class_list":["post-18000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-facebook-checks","category-fact-check","category-homepage","category-sport","tag-20-year-old","tag-barcelona","tag-barcelona-football-club","tag-doctored-image","tag-fact-check","tag-footballer","tag-lamine-yamal","tag-misinformation","tag-nigeria"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8R6dE-4Gk","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":4129,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"faruk-shuaibu","display_name":"Faruk Shuaibu","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/pasted-image-0-6.png?fit=958%2C638&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18000"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18034,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18000\/revisions\/18034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18000"},{"taxonomy":"verdict","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/verdict?post=18000"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=18000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}