Users of social networking sites shared a picture that their publishers claimed was the president of the Cameroon Football Association, Samuel Eto’o, offering a bribe to the referee who took charge of the match that his country won against Algeria.
The picture shows the former football player and current president of the Cameroon Football Association, Samuel Eto’o, and Gambian referee Bakari Gassama, in the middle of an image that appears to have been taken from a surveillance camera.
Below the photo, he wrote: “Urgent: There is evidence that Eto’o and Governor Gassama are meeting in Paris and he is paying him a sum of money.”
The accompanying comment stated: “If the information is confirmed, the Cameroon national team is ineligible for the World Cup and Algeria qualifies for the World Cup.”
But the picture is in fact excerpted from a video of a quarrel between the Minister of Development and the Palestinian Doctors Syndicate a few months ago, according to what was revealed by the “Bilscale” service in Agence France-Presse.
And the spread of this image began collecting thousands of posts on Facebook on March 30, 2022, the day after Cameroon defeated Algeria in the last breath of extra time 2-1, in the FIFA World Cup qualifiers.
The Gambian Bakari Gassama was the referee of this match, during which Cameroon snatched the qualification for the 2022 World Cup from Algeria.
The Algerian Football Federation submitted an appeal to the International Football Association (FIFA) against “the outrageous arbitration that distorted the result of the second leg match between Algeria and Cameroon.”
However, the image circulated has nothing to do with all that.
The search through search engines showed that it was extracted from a video published by several Palestinian websites of a fight that took place months ago.
According to Palestinian media, a fistfight took place between Palestinian Minister of Social Affairs Ahmed Majdalani and Shawki Sabha, the Syndicate of Physicians in the West Bank, last January.