Soccer, football, or fútbol — no matter what you call it, you likely know one of the sport’s most famous players: Cristiano Ronaldo. But did the Portuguese captain, known for breaking records, refuse to wear a pro-LGBTQ armband at a European tournament?
“At Euro 2020, UEFA (European Football Association) ordered all team captains to wear ‘OneLove’ bands. The band was used as a symbol of LGBTQ,” read the caption on a June 16 Facebook post, “but, Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo was the only European captain who did not wear the band.” The post’s caption was later edited to say Ronaldo chose not to wear the armband.
The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
The post includes an image of Ronaldo and Germany team captain Manuel Neuer. Neuer is sporting a rainbow armband; Ronaldo is not.
(Screenshot of Facebook post)
But this post misses the goal.
Euro 2020 was a continent-wide soccer tournament organized by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) that took place in June 2021. A handful of team captains wore LGBTQ-supportive armbands during the tournament, but it wasn’t universal among the 24 teams. A spokesperson from the UEFA confirmed to PolitiFact that there was no rule requiring captains to wear such an armband.
We found several images from the 2020 tournament of other captains without any rainbow or pro-LGBTQ+ armbands.
The players who wore pro-LGBTQ+ armbands, namely Netherlands team captain Gini Wijnaldum, England captain Harry Kane and Neuer, garnered headlines for doing so.
The UEFA initially launched an investigation into Neuer’s armband to determine whether it violated rules about making political statements, according to ESPN, but the group dropped its investigation.
The “One Love” armbands mentioned in the Facebook post are part of a 2020 campaign started by the Dutch Football Association designed to combat discrimination in soccer. The movement grew more visible ahead of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Before the World Cup, several European team captains had agreed to wear the “One Love” band, but backed down after FIFA threatened to issue yellow cards over it. Ronaldo was not one of the seven captains who had committed to wearing the armband.
Ronaldo was not the “only” team captain who didn’t wear a rainbow armband during Euro 2020; most of the captains did not. Those who did, like Neuer, were investigated by the UEFA. We rate this mistaken Facebook claim False.