When Robert Lewandowski scored a brace against the Faroe Islands on Friday, the television commentator exclaimed Poland’s greatest footballer has still retained all the trickeries of the world.
It was his eighty-first international goal for his country sitting behind only a certain Ferenc Puskas and Cristiano Ronaldo in Europe’s all-time topscorer for their country table.
ESPN took this opportunity after Poland’s match against the Faroe Islands to post about a game, where the words twenty-year-old defender are written under his name, captioning the forward had once played as a defender.
To narrate half-truth posts or to shift the goalposts even ever so slightly from what is the truth is an everyday occurrence in our social media world where truth and fiction are merging all the time but one would not expect so from the official page of ESPN, considering their stature and thereby the integrity one imagines an organization has to abide by given the stature ESPN possesses.
Fans initially believed the post might be true leading to a barrage of hilarious comments.
One person saw Lewandowski’s supposed transformation from defender to striker, as the perfect opportunity for the same transformation to happen to Harry Maguire.
Who knows that might seriously reinvigorate Maguire’s career and greatly help Manchester United along the way.
Another follower of ESPN’s official page, talked about the summer of 2021, when Lewandowski arguably was the favorite to win the Ballon d’Or after winning the Quadruple with Bayern Munich but it was Messi who was eventually handed the prize.
There was a prevailing sentiment about how this once-defender turned into one of the greatest forward players in the history of the game was robbed of winning the coveted prize of acknowledgment of being the greatest footballer on the planet.
Lewandowski’s six hundred-plus career goals did not go unnoticed with comments about the Polish being the highest-scoring defender with the amount of goals he has in his tally.
Thankfully with all the awfulness going on at X following Elon Musk’s takeover of the company, there is an addition of Community Notes where false or fake information can be fact-checked for the truth.
ESPN’s fake post came under scrutiny with Community Notes now established under the post of the words defender written under Lewandowski’s name being simply a broadcasting overlap when a young Robert Lewandowski was coming on as a substitute playing for his country.
To add further context, Lewandowski was playing against San Marino in the match in question, on 10 September 2008, and even scored a goal coming from the bench.
There were all the plausible signs of Lewandowski in his youth going on to do for his club and country what he has done but he has never played any professional game defending his goal as the post by ESPN claimed.
One imagines and as written by a commenter under the post given Lewandowski’s prowess in the game he would have still made quite a career even playing as a defender instead of his usual position.
