By: Anurag Baruah
December 5 2022
False: Lionel Messi gave his Man of the Match award to teammate Alexis Mac Allister after the Poland vs. Argentina match at the FIFA World Cup 2022.
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Fact-Check
The Verdict False
Mac Allister was the man of the match for scoring a goal against Poland and helping the team secure a position in the final 16 at the World Cup.
Claim ID aab952e8
Context
The FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar kicked off on November 20, 2022 and the players' performance and the matches' results are being widely discussed on social media.
Following Argentina's win over Poland on December 1, a claim began doing the rounds that the Argentinian captain and star player Lionel Messi gave his 'man of the match' award to teammate Alexis Mac Allister to boost the latter's morale. One such post was made on Twitter by a handle named 'FIFA World Cup Stats' (@alimo_philip), who used an image purportedly showing Messi had received the accolade. The post has garnered 52.8K likes and 7.9K Retweets. A seven-time Ballon d'Or winner, Messi has immense popularity globally.
However, this claim is incorrect. It was Mac Allister who received the official player-of-the-match award after scoring against Poland on December 1, 2022, not Messi, and so there was no question of Messi giving his award to his teammate.
In Fact
We did a keyword search on Google, following which we came across a news report by Reuters naming Mac Allister as the man-of-the-match, noting that the player's goal helped secure Argentina's position in the final 16 in Qatar.
Confirmation of this can be found on FIFA World Cup’s official media channels. On December 1, 2022, the official Twitter handle of the FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) tweeted: "Imagine scoring your first ever international goal at the #FIFAWorldCup. Alexis Mac Allister seals top spot for Argentina and earns himself the @Budweiser Player of the Match award,"
Another Twitter post by 'FIFA World Cup' included a video showing Mac Allister speaking to a reporter after winning the player of the match award, where the reporter asks Allister, "if you could give this award to a teammate, who would it be and why?" to which he replied "I would always choose Leo [Lionel Messi]. He makes things easier. So, definitely him."
The Verdict
Alexis Mac Allister won the player-of-the-match award in the Poland vs. Argentina match at the FIFA World Cup 2022 on December 1, not Lionel Messi. Therefore we are marking this claim as false.