Video of football fans in Morocco supporting Palestine shared as from Ireland

Context

The recent war between Hamas and Israel started on October 7, 2023, with heavy casualties on both sides. The war is still ongoing. Amid this, much disinformation about the war is circulating on social media. Against this backdrop, a video was shared on X (previously Twitter) with the claim: “Huge crowd during a football match show support for Palestine in Ireland”. The video shows the crowd in the football stadium waving Palestinian flags and other flags and singing in unison in support of Palestine. The tweet has nearly 2, 40, 000 views by the time of publication. An archive of the tweet can be found here. 

The same video is shared on Facebook with the same claim. Archived versions of the posts can be seen here and here. 

Screenshots of the posts on social media (Source: X/Facebook/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, this video is not from Ireland.

What did we find?

When we looked closely at the 24-second video, at 0:15 seconds timestamp, we could see the scoreboard with the names of the teams and their logos. The names of the teams are listed as RCA and MAT. 

Screenshot of the scoreboard from the viral video (Source: X)

With these markers, we looked for football clubs with these names and logos. We identified that RCA is Raja Club Athletic Beausejour in Casablanca, Morocco. This club is popularly known as Raja Casablanca. It has the same logo as is projected on the scoreboard. Similarly, MAT is Moghreb Atletico Tetouan club. The logos resemble the ones seen on the scoreboard. 

A comparison of the logos seen in the viral video and the logos of the teams (Source: X/matfoot.com/Screenshots)

The scoreboard in the viral video also has a clock that shows the time as 8:40. As per the scoreboard seen in the viral video, it is evident that the video was taken 9.59 mins into the match, which meant the match between RCA and MAT possibly started at 8.30 p.m. 

Our research showed us that the video was probably taken during the match between RCA and MAT at Mohammed V stadium, a sports complex in Casablanca, Morocco, on October 8. The match started at 8:30 p.m., Moroccan time, according to sports website Scorebat. The timing, too, aligns here. 

Users on social media shared snippets of this match on October 9, 2023, with the caption that it is from the match between RCA and MAT in Morocco. 

A YouTube channel called ‘Zemama35’ shared an extended version of the video, in which we can see the same crowd waving Palestinian flags along with other flags and singing songs in unison. The same scoreboard and the timer can be seen in the video. We then looked for videos of the recent match between RCA and MAT. 

The official X account of RCA shared updates from the match between them and MAT on October 8, 2023. RCA won the game 1-0. Therefore, it is clear that the video is from Morocco and not Ireland. 

The verdict

A video of football fans supporting Palestine during a match in Morocco is shared to be from Ireland. Therefore, we have marked this claim false.