No, Referee Did Not Celebrate France's World Cup Win Over England

A video showing an alleged celebration by referee Mike Dean after football club Tottenham Hotspur's opening goal against Aston Villa during a 2015 English Premier League match is being shared with the false claim that it shows referee Wilton Sampaio celebrating on field after France's victory against England during the FIFA World Cup 2022 quarter final match.

England got knocked out of the World Cup by France after losing 2-1 on December 11, 2022. English footballer Harry Maguire hit out at the standard of refereeing claiming that some of the decisions made were 'really poor'. There were several flashpoints during the game and the match referee Wilton Sampaio's decision-making was criticised by English supporters after the defeat.

The video was originally posted on Tiktok by user @lewisdonnerkebab with the caption 'pov: the ref after France won'; It was tweeted by the Twitter user @yohoecat with the caption, "That france v England game was rigged as shit with that ref. It was plain obvious he's been doing it alot." (sic.) The video has gained more than 31,000 views on Twitter during the time of writing this article.

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FACT-CHECK

BOOM found that the viral footage is from an English Premier League (EPL) football match between Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa in 2015 and not from the FIFA World Cup 2022 France vs England quarter-final game.

The incident of former English referee Mike Dean seen waving advantage before pointing back toward the center circle went viral back in November 2015 with several alleging then that he was celebrating the opening goal against Aston Villa. Dean had then dismissed the claims which alleged that he was celebrating Tottenham Hotspur's goal.

On viewing the viral video, we noticed that the referee seemed to be wearing a different outfit than what the match referees were seen wearing during the quarter-final match between England and France. Taking a hint from this, we then searched with the keywords, 'referee celebrating goal' on YouTube and found that the video is not from the ongoing FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

The search results showed the original clip that was uploaded on YouTube on November 3, 2015, with the caption, 'Referee Mike Dean celebrating Tottenham goal vs Aston Villa!' The footage in this video matches the sequence of events in the viral video.

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The incident took place during the match after Belgian footballer Mousa Dembélé playing for Tottenham Hotspur scored the opening goal against Aston Villa. Tottenham Hotspur went on to win the match by 3 - 1.

Former English professional football referee Dean clarified during a podcast show in February 2020, that he was not actually celebrating Tottenham scoring, but was merely happy that his decision to play advantage had led to a goal saying, "Probably the stupid Tottenham-Aston Villa advantage thing I did about four years ago [is the most Mike Dean thing I've ever done]," reported football.london.

"I played on and you kind of don't play on when it's in the box, it's the wrong thing to do because you don't play advantage in the box; you either give a pen or you do nothing. When it went into the back of the net I said 'that'll do for me, goal' and I was pointing to the centre circle. I didn't realise I was doing it until they showed it on the screen. That's probably the most bizarre thing I've done," said Dean.

An 'advantage' in footballing terms is basically if the ball is received and the attack is promising (presented with an opportunity to shoot or score), then 'advantage' is applied and play is allowed to continue without the referee blowing the whistle.

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