Old videos falsely linked to disorder during PSG's Champions League celebrations in France
- Published on June 11, 2026 at 07:50
- 5 min read
- By Sammy HEUNG, Cristina ALONSO PASCUAL, Hawon Jung, AFP Hong Kong, AFP Spain, AFP South Korea
Violent clashes tarnished celebrations in the streets of the French capital after Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) defended its Champions League title on May 30, 2026, but videos of people destroying vehicles and launching fireworks circulating in Chinese social media posts are old and unrelated. One of them was filmed during the 2024 protests in Georgia, while others were shot in Paris in 2022 and 2025.
"PSG won the Champions League, but the celebrations in Paris were completely distorted and became a playground for some people to vent their frustrations!" says a simplified Chinese Weibo post shared on May 31.
The attached video shows a group of men damaging a black Mercedes-Benz car.
A Facebook post also shared a clip on the day showing overturned cars that had been set on fire on a street littered with debris, before cutting to a group of people smashing the glass panels of a bus shelter.
"Paris jolted awake by overnight unrest as number of arrests rises to 416 -- Le Figaro," says its traditional Chinese caption.
Another video shared on Douyin on June 1 shows several people launching fireworks, with the simplified Chinese caption and text overlay claiming that it was "French football fans using Gatling-style fireworks against the police in Paris".
The posts emerged after PSG beat English Premier League champions Arsenal on penalties on the night of May 30 to secure their second straight Champions League title (archived link).
But celebrations were blighted by clashes between youths and police in Paris and other cities. One man died riding his motorbike around the Paris ring road in celebration while authorities reported stabbings and other attacks.
The false videos were also posted on Hong Kong paper Wen Wei Po's Facebook page, on Chinese news sites Baidu and Sohu and in multiple languages including English, Spanish and Croatian.
But reverse image searches on Google using keyframes found the clips were old.
2025 PSG win
The first clip was posted on May 9, 2025 on X with an overlaid text in Turkish that says "This is France" (archived link).
A man can be heard saying in French at the end of the video: "Guys, the guy tried to run over a bunch of people. He ran off. He ditched his car. I swear it was so intense for him".
Paris prosecutor's office said on May 11, 2025 the car's driver was arrested after he drove his car through a crowd celebrating PSG's qualification for the Champions League final on Champs-Elysees, injuring three people (archived link).
Further reverse image searches found other clips of the same incident filmed from different angles, including a video report by French media Le Parisien with a title that reads: "Car drives into crowd of fans near Champs-Élysées after PSG win" (archived here, here and here).
The car's registration plate in the report matches that in the falsely shared video.
Street view imagery on Google Maps shows the man at the end of the video filmed himself near a golf store on Avenue Marceau -- across the intersection where the car was stopped outside a pharmacy (archived link). The sign of the pharmacy also matches the one in the video.
2022 Paris protests
The footage showing an overturned car and a smashed bus stop was in fact filmed during 2022 demonstrations in Paris.
The first part was shared by French journalist Remy Buisine on X on December 24, 2022 (archived link).
AFP also published a photo and a video showing the same overturned car.
It had also previously been shared alongside false claims linking it to protests against pension reforms in France in 2023 and another bout of violence in Paris in January 2026.
Thousands of people gathered at the Place de la Republique in central Paris on the day to pay tribute to the three Kurds killed in an attack carried out by a man who confessed to a "pathological" hatred for foreigners (archived link).
Many expressed anger at the French security services for doing too little to prevent the shooting, and the frustration boiled over at the rally as furious demonstrators clashed with police. AFP journalists at the scene said at least four cars were overturned and one was burnt.
The second part of the clip was shared on the official X account of Turkish media GDH on December 24, 2022 showing the same clashes (archived link).
The demonstrator wearing a yellow headscarf seen 34 seconds into the clip is also in footage of the protest aired on French TV station CNEWS (archived link).
2024 Georgia protest
The third video was published by the Spanish media outlet El País on December 3, 2024 on YouTube (archived link).
"A protester builds a fireworks cannon at the pro-European protests in Georgia," its title states.
Other media outlets also published the same clip and other images of the events, and placed them in the vicinity of the parliament building in Tbilisi, Georgia, a location that matches the imagery on Google Street View (archived here, here and here).
AFP has previously debunked misinformation related to other protests.
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