How A Graphic Designer Fooled The Footballing World
For us here in England, EURO 2020 ended in an all-too-familiar fashion. Penalty shootout woe. We’re still hurting here at Uni4m HQ. But whilst fans of the Three Lions were busy wondering what could have been, a graphic designer based in Oslo, Norway, was already planning a social media stunt that would leave some of sport’s biggest news outlets with eggs on their faces.
The end-of-tournament awards are hugely significant. Often, they recognise the players that have won over the hearts of supporters with glimmering performances, that more often than not, did not end up winning the competition. This is definitely the case with the ‘Team of the Tournament’. The XI is a dream lineup of players who have been the finest in their position. Unfortunately, unlike the Golden Boot, however, the ‘TOTT’ is a matter of opinion. This means, more often than not, there is plenty of disagreement – especially on social media – over which players deserved a spot in the team.
It’s a pretty big deal. Fans are always eager to learn who’s made the ‘TOTT’.
And Norweigan graphic designer, F_Edits (or Fredrik) was very aware of this. Having worked with the likes of Harry Kane, Iker Casillas, and Jamaal Lascelles, he’s established an online reputation as one of football’s premier graphic designers – and it’s easy to see why. With an audience waiting, he hatched a plan.
EURO 2020: Where It All Began
In an experiment designed to “show people how easily and quickly fake things can be spread online”, he created the following graphic and asked online buddy @False_CF to share it. This was where it all started. In less than three hours, it would go from being a tweet from a single account with less than 4k followers, to being reported as the official team.
The timing of the tweet was important. It came at a time when UEFA was slowly releasing the tournament awards, with social media already in a frenzy. Whilst this made the ‘Team of the Tournament’s’ release believable, it also made it even easier to fact-check the UEFA EURO 2020 account. Official updates were everywhere.
Fredrik deliberately included players that would spark debate – to enhance the speed it was shared on social media. Namely Granit Xhaka and Kasper Dolberg. They had played well enough to ensure the graphic wasn’t instantly dismissed as being false, but perhaps not as well as others – sparking the intended debate.
Where Was It Reported?
Twitter users began asking the all-important question. But this did little to stop the graphic from appearing all over social media.
Within hours, accounts such as NBCSports, talkSPORT, BetConnect, City Report, and many, many more, began sharing the graphic as the ‘official’ XI. The experiment had unfolded as planned.
But what makes this even better (or worse, depending on how you perceive it), is that Fredrik had done this before. This time, for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Again, using a fake Team of the Tournament, he collected the scalps of Bleacher Report, Sporf, and William Hill, amongst others. Whilst they learned their lesson, it seems others did not.
“I hope every reporter and reader can learn to be more generally more skeptical and better to source-check”, said Fredrik on Twitter. In an era where being the first to a social media news story has never been so desired, it has also never been so important to verify your sources. ‘Fake news’ is rife. There’s nothing more embarrassing than having to delete a post.
Twitter is making strides to ensure that only truth is shared on its platform. But ultimately, it falls on us to make sure that we take the time to verify our sources when posting on socials.
Thanks to a tech-savvy graphic designer from Norway, social media learned a valuable lesson. We salute you, Fredrik.