Wayne Rooney was in attendance to watch Manchester United suffer an embarrassing 3-0 loss to Tottenham Hotspur at Old Trafford on Sunday (29 September).
The Sky Sports cameras were able to catch him sitting in the VIP box, after which a rather shocking picture of him started circulating all over social media.
This picture showed a very elderly looking Rooney sitting in his seat watching the game. The snap shows the ex-Manchester United captain with an extremely bloated, red face and a bushy white beard.
Even his hair has gone slightly grey in this picture, showing him to be looking much older than what he really is (39) and very much resembling King Robert Baratheon from Game of Thrones.
But the reality is that this picture is a result of some Photoshop work.
Some fans decided to take a screenshot of the moment the Sky Sports cameras caught him watching the United game and age him up dramatically.
Rooney actually does not look like this at this moment at all. While he has put on some weight and yes his beard is starting to go grey, he does not have as much facial hair as the fake picture has insinuated.
The Plymouth Argyle manager does look a bit older than what he really is, but the ‘bloated affect’ is only the result of some mischievous editing work.
Unfortunately, this fake Rooney picture isn’t the only prominent fake news that is circulating all over social media right now.
There is another fake story that was created out of Spurs’ astonishing demolition of the Red Devils at their own yard, this time at the expense of proactive defender Pedro Porro.
The Spanish full-back played a key role in helping his side get the win, keeping United’s left-wing quiet and also adding attacking spark.
After the game, Porro (who has over 550,000 followers on his Instagram) posted a picture on the platform of himself making a tackle on Marcus Rashford to celebrate himself winning the duel against the Englishman.
But some fans decided to edit that picture and add the words ‘’This City is Blue’ written as a caption before starting to circulate it all over social media.
Many were duped as Porro was a Man City player from 2019 to 2022 but didn’t play a single game as he was loaned out to Real Valladolid and Sporting CP.
To his credit, Porro (or his social media team) was able to identify this fake picture and quickly shut it down by commenting ‘Fake’ on one of the posts promoting it.
Even Al Hilal star Neymar has become the latest victim of a fake story being circulated over the internet.
The Brazilian forward is currently on the road to recovery from the awful knee injury he sustained last year that forced him to miss the 2024 Copa America.
The 32-year-old has not played a competitive game since 3 October 2023 and is pushing hard to make his return for the Saudi Pro League side.
He has released some pictures showing himself working hard in the gym in an effort to regain fitness. One of the photos have started going viral among Barcelona fans.
It shows a close-up look at one of Neymar’s tattoos on his right hand, which reveals that he might have a tattoo of the Barcelona club crest inked into him with the words ‘MSN’ written above.
The ‘MSN’ is a reference to the Leo Messi-Luis Suarez-Neymar trio that enjoyed quite a lot of success at Barcelona, winning multiple La Liga titles as well as the UEFA Champions League together.
As sweet as this looks, there is no Barcelona club crest tattoo on Neymar’s body.
The original picture of him working out in the gym, posted by the superstar on his Instagram account, shows that there is no tattoo of his former club or MSN in that part of his right arm.
The wide range of photo editing options in the current day-and-age has made it very easy to create fake news out of anything, with these stories showing just how easy it can be to fool supporters into believing something that didn’t even happen.