Image shows Indonesian winners of Gothia Special Olympics Trophy, not 'U-15 football world champions'
- Published on November 21, 2024 at 07:11
- 3 min read
- By AFP Indonesia
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"Dreams come true!!! The under-15 national team became the 2024 world champions," read part of the Indonesian-language caption to an image shared on Facebook on November 5, 2024.
"To the senior team: it is your time to achieve victory and show your younger brothers that you can also do it!!!"
The image, which shows players posing with a trophy, is superimposed with text that repeats the caption.
The same image was shared in similar Facebook posts claiming it shows Indonesia's newly crowned under-15 world champions here and here, as well as on Threads.
It was shared amid a resurgence in the fortunes of Indonesian football under South Korean coach Shin Tae-yong, who has called on a policy of using naturalised players to boost the team's success (archived link).
The team is in the decisive third round of Asian qualifying as they attempt to reach the 2026 World Cup in North America, in a six-team group that boasts regional powerhouses Japan and Australia (archived link).
Only the top two reach the World Cup automatically, with third and fourth going into another stage of qualifying.
World football's governing body FIFA, however, does not hold an under-15 World Cup tournament and the image circulating online does not show Indonesia's under-15 national team (archived link).
Gothia Special Olympics Trophy
A reverse image search on Google led to a similar image posted on Instagram on July 18 (archived link).
It was shared by Indonesia's ambassador to Sweden Kamapradipta Isnomo in a post congratulating the Special Olympics Indonesia team for their "brilliant result" in lifting the Gothia Special Olympics Trophy.
The tournament featured 48 teams from 15 nations, with players aged between 16 and 29 and having some form of intellectual disability (archived links here and here).
It was held parallel to the Gothia Cup, an international youth football tournament held in Sweden (archived link).
The logo of Special Olympics Indonesia (SOIna) -- an organisation that organises sports training and competitions for people with intellectual disabilities -- can be seen on the flag held up by the person on the right of the Instagram photo (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison between the image falsely shared on Facebook (left) and the photo shared by the Indonesian ambassador (right):
The same photo was shared on the Instagram account of Special Olympics Indonesia DKI Jakarta (archived link).
The Indonesian side's victory was covered by local media here and here (archived links here and here).
AFP has debunked other sports-related misinformation circulating in football-mad Indonesia here, here and here.
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