A collage of three old images showing different angles of a littered dressing room has been shared on social media with a false claim that it shows an unclean dressing room of Japan after its loss to Costa Rica in the 2022 FIFA World Cup match.
BOOM found that the images show Italy's dressing room following a World Cup play-off match defeat to North Macedonia in March, 2022.
Videos of Japanese fans cleaning the stadium and collecting trash left behind by World Cup spectators in Qatar after the matches are over have emerged on the internet. The Japanese fans have been lauded for their civic sense.
Meanwhile, Costa Rica defeated Japan by 0-1 in the FIFA World Cup match on Sunday, November 27, 2022 in Ahmad bin Ali Stadium, Qatar.
The viral image has been shared widely on Facebook. It shows trash such as food waste, used tissue and plastic bottles scattered in a dressing room.
One such Facebook post has been captioned as, "Japan's dressing room after Costa Rica match". View the Facebook post here and here.
Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search on Google and found the image on several media outlets from March 2022.
Mirror published a report with the same images in March 2022 with the headline, "Leonardo Bonucci apologises for state of Italy changing room with cigarette butts found."
According to the report, images emerged online about Italian players leaving the dressing room unclean with litter such as cigarette butts, plastic bottles, used tissues and food waste scattered around following a World Cup play-off defeat to North Macedonia in March, 2022.
Later, Italian player Leonardo Bonucci had apologised for the state of the dressing room post the match.
Read the same report on Daily Star and Daily Mail.
Italian media outlets such as Corriere and Palermo Today also carried the news in March, 2022.