Claim: Football player Christiano Ronaldo sold one of his gold boots for €1.5 million and donated all the money to children in Palestine.
Fact: Christiano Ronaldo did not sell his golden boot to donate money to children in Palestine.
In the first week of January 2024, social media users posted an image (archived) of the football player, Christiano Ronaldo kissing a golden boot with the text “Christiano Ronaldo Sold One of His Golden Boots For 1.5 Million Euro & Give All Money To Children in Palestine”.
Fact or Fiction?
The European Golden Shoe is a trophy sculpture of a football boot. This award is presented each season to the leading goal scorer in league matches from the top division of a European national league. Ronaldo has won four Golden Boot awards in his career.
We thoroughly reviewed Spanish news websites, namely El Pais, El Mundo as well as popular Spanish news magazines such as Football Espana, MARACA and SPORT. and found that none of the publications had reported on the matter.
Interestingly, Soch Fact Check found that the false claim about Ronaldo donating his golden boot to support Palestinian children has been made before. Searching the keywords “Ronaldo”, “Palestine” and “golden boot” led us to an article from 2012, published on a website called Sportskeeda, with the headline “Ronaldo’s Golden Boot donation to Palestine a false alarm”. According to this article, a false piece of news claimed that Ronaldo auctioned the Golden Boot he won in 2011 with the La Liga club for 1.4 million euros in order to support children in Palestine.
Another article from 2018, published by the Daily Times with the headline “4 Ronaldo donation reports that turned out to be false” traces four instances where false “donation-related news” regarding Ronaldo went viral. The article notes that each of the four viral claims turned out to be false for one reason or another. In one instance a false donation-related claim circulating on WhatsApp in 2018 was debunked as, “neither Ronaldo, nor his club or an authentic media outlet has reported it.” Another donation-related claim was “only circulated by a click-bait website” and in a third instance, the rumours around Ronaldo’s donation to earthquake victims in Nepal were officially “rejected by Save the Children NGO,” the article added.
We also surveyed Ronaldo’s official X (formerly Twitter) handle for any confirmation on the subject, and did not find any posts reporting that he had made a donation of this kind.
Virality
On Facebook, the false post received over 46,000 interactions and this post received 128,000 interactions. It was also shared here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Conclusion: Christiano Ronaldo did not sell his Golden Boot award for €1.5 million to donate money to the children of Palestine.
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Background image in cover photo: Al Jazeera
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