Clip with edited 'anti-Chinese Football Association chant' surface online after team's crushing defeat

ATTENTION: This article contains offensive language 

The video shows crowds lining a street and hurling objects at a moving bus which is flanked by security officials.

A chant of "Fuck the Chinese Football Association!" can be heard in Mandarin in the background.

The footage made the rounds after the Chinese men's football team suffered humiliation in a 7-0 thrashing to rivals Japan in World Cup 2026 qualifying (archived link).

One X account that shared the clip, racking up 295,000 views, joked that it showed Chinese fans "expressing gratitude" to the players after they "returned triumphantly from Japan".

The post claimed the video was filmed on September 7 outside the headquarters of the Chinese Football Association (CFA) in Beijing and shared a screenshot of its location on an online map.

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Screenshot of an X post sharing the false claim

China's President Xi Jinping once said he wanted the country to host and even win the World Cup one day, but that ambition looked further away than ever after the chastening defeat in Japan's Saitama Prefecture on September 5.

The hammering in Saitama was hotly discussed on Weibo, where posts with the hashtag "National team loses to Japan 0-7" were viewed more than 630 million times. Another went as far as to call for the team to be "disbanded".

The false video was circulated in similar posts on Facebook, Reddit, Bilibili, and X, including one post with 1.3 million views.

However, the footage was edited to add the insult and was in fact unrelated to the Chinese team's World Cup qualifier defeat.

Dalian defeat

A reverse image search found the same footage was shared in a Bilibili post, which said it showed a scene after a match that Dalian Yingbo hosted against Guangzhou FC -- referring to a Chinese Football Association League 1 game held in Shandong province in May (archived here and here). 

Below is a comparison between the video falsely shared online (left) and the Bilibili video (right):

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Comparison between the video falsely shared online (left) and the Bilibili video (right)

AFP confirmed the video was filmed outside the Dalian Suoyuwan Football Stadium by comparing it to Baidu Maps images from the area (archived links here and here).

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Screenshot comparison between the scenes shown in the false video (left) and the Baidu Maps (right) street view

Similar footage was posted in a Bilibili video that said it showed Dalian fans throwing water bottles at the Guangzhou team's bus (archived link).

The video features audio of people talking and music, but not chanting insults.

Dalian's winning streak ended with a 1-0 loss in the match, and several players from the team were suspended and fined for violent behaviour during and after the game (archived links here and here).

Chinese outlet the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald also reported on May 6 that Dalian fans threw water bottles at the bus carrying Guangzhou players from the stadium after the match (archived link).

Unrelated audio

A keyword search found the audio of the false video was taken from a clip published on X on August 10, 2023 (archived link).

The crowd seen in orange jerseys are supporters of Shandong Taishan, a Chinese Super League club formerly known as Shandong Luneng (archived link).

"On August 8, at a match between Shandong Luneng and Chengdu Rongcheng, fans insulted the Chinese Football Association in unison," the post read.

Several social media posts suggested fans of the losing home team were venting frustration at a decision by the referee.

The same footage circulated online widely at the time, including in Weibo and YouTube posts in which the chanting is audible (archived link).