Jerome Miron-Imagn Images
Sports fans have a tendency to latch onto conspiracy theories, and there was no shortage of them to pick from during the World Cup. One of the more popular ones was the belief that FIFA was rigging the proceedings to benefit Argentina, and Cristiano Ronaldo seemed to throw his support behind that sentiment in the wake of the tournament.
Many sports fans find themselves searching for a scapegoat when things don’t go their way, which is commonly manifested through disdain for the referees who seemed to have a vendetta against your team to the point where it seems reasonable to suggest they were doing the bidding of higher-ups who dictated the outcome of a game.
It’s a bit hard to imagine leagues and governing bodies are constantly scheming to interfere with the contests they oversee. With that said, it can also be difficult to deny it’s a possibility in situations where the storylines that benefit them the most are only able to unfold due to a series of events that straddles the line between “convenient” and “improbable.”
The circumstances surrounding Argentina’s run to the World Cup final managed to arouse the suspicions of soccer fans around the globe, and it sure looks like a Portuguese superstar who played in the tournament for the last time felt something was up.
Cristiano Ronaldo was caught liking a video about FIFA rigging the World Cup to help Argentina
Argentina headed into the 2026 World Cup hoping to become just the third team in history to repeat as champions. No player was expected to be a bigger factor than Lionel Messi, who was also the most marketable star on any roster.
That reality meant FIFA benefited from Argentina (and, in turn, Messi) remaining in the World Cup for as long as possible, and its reputation for corruption helped fuel conspiracy theories concerning the ways it purportedly pulled the strings to keep them in the mix.
For example, Messi avoided any type of card for a questionable tackle against Algeria even though a similar one led to the controversial red that Team USA’s Folarin Balogun received, and many viewers thought refs were far too lenient when it came to policing the, um, aggressive tackling that defined the team’s defense.
There were also multiple VAR interventions that went in Argentina’s favor. None of them garnered more attention than the overturned goal that erased the tally that would have given Egypt a 2-0 lead in a game they ultimately lost 3-2, but Messi and Co. were also able to take advantage of the review that led to Switzerland being hit with a red card and losing after surrendering two goals down a man.
Argentina ultimately lost to Spain in the final, and prior to that showdown, Spanish journalist Pilar Losanto went off on FIFA during an appearance on Espejo Público. She used the show to rip into what she positioned as the “most corrupt organization on the planet” and asserted Argentina would not have stayed alive as long as it did without its intervention.
That clip racked up hundreds of thousands of likes, including the one that came from the account associated with none other than Cristiano Ronaldo, who announced his sixth World Cup would be his last and saw it come to an end with a loss to Spain.
It would appear the like was retroactively removed after it predictably caused a bit of a stir, and while Ronaldo does have some plausible deniability given the nature of his account, I want to believe he was the person responsible.