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Claim: A Facebook page, Sams Sipp, claimed Cristiano Ronaldo has won the 2025 top scorer award in the just-concluded UEFA Nations League.
Verdict: False! The 2025 Nations League top scorer is a Swedish player, Vicktor Gyökeres, not Cristiano Ronaldo. The image of Cristiano Ronaldo holding the top scorer award and the Nations League trophy dates back to 2019.
Full Text
Portugal captain, Cristiano Ronaldo, was in tears after lifting his second UEFA Nations League trophy for Portugal, beating the defending champions, Spain, in a penalty shootout.
The victory marked a significant milestone in the Portuguese’s life, putting him at the centre stage after scoring his 138th international goal in the final to seal Portugal’s 2-2 score.
Since 2019, this is the third time Cristiano Ronaldo has lifted a trophy for his country, cementing Portugal as the second European country to win the UEFA Nations League two times more than any other European country.
The 40-year-old Portuguese star has now scored 938 goals, the most ever scored by a professional footballer, as reported by beIN SPORTS.
However, a popular Facebook page, Sams Sipp, claimed Cristiano Ronaldo had won the 2025 UEFA Nations League top scorer award.
The claim was followed by a photo of Cristiano Ronaldo smiling and holding a top scorer award.
The claim reads: “Cristiano Ronaldo wins the UEFA Nations League Finals top scorer award 24/25. He won it in the 18-19 season too.”
Hours after Sams Sipp posted the claim, it has garnered 713 likes, 40 comments, and 16 shares.
Most of the followers, who commented on the post, found the claim untrue, even though there were some controversies.
A similar claim by Sams Sipp was found here, here, and here.
DUBAWA decided to fact-check the claim due to its mandate to amplify truth.
Verification
Using a Google keyword search, DUBAWA found that UEFA did not award Cristiano Ronaldo the top scorer in the 2025 UEFA Nations League.
Despite scoring eight goals in nine matches, DUBAWA found that Cristiano Ronaldo did not top the tournament as the top scorer.
Further search on the official UEFA website revealed that a Swedish player, Viktor Ghökeres, won the 2025 UEFA Nations League top scorer award with nine goals, just a goal ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo.
UEFA revealed on its official website; “Sweden’s Viktor Gyökeres finished as the leading scorer in the 2024/25 UEFA Nations League with nine goals, piping Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo, who scored the winner in Portugal’s semi-final against Germany and added another in the final victory against Spain to finish on eight.”
Below are the 2024/2025 UEFA Nations League Top scorers.
- Viktor Gyökeres (Sweden) 9 goals
- Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) 8 goals.
- Erling Haaland (Norway) 7 goals.
- George Mikautadze (Georgia) 7 goals.
- Ràzvan Marin (Romania) 6 goals.
DUBAWA also subjected Sipp’s image of Cristiano Ronaldo to a Google image reverse search. We discovered that it was taken in 2019 when he was awarded the top scorer of the UEFA Nations League after scoring three goals in the tournament.
We verified the results of the Google image reverse search on UEFA. We found that Cristiano Ronaldo was only awarded the Alipay Player of the Year Top Scorer award in the 2018/2019 season when Portugal won the UEFA Nations League for the first time.
The Alipay Top Scorer is awarded to the top scorer of the UEFA Nations League.
Conclusion:
DUBAWA’s investigation proved that Cristiano Ronaldo was not awarded the UEFA Nations League top scorer award as Viktor Ghökeres led him. The image by Sams Sipp dates back to 2019.
