On September 1, 2021, the world media circulated the news that the British Queen ordered 80 Cristiano Ronaldo T-shirts and also asked for an autograph for the first time in her life. We checked if this is true.

Here is a typical news text: “Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain asked the management of Manchester United to allocate 80 T-shirts of striker Cristiano Ronaldo for the royal court. In addition, Elizabeth reserved the Portuguese footballer's first shirt, which he signed after returning to Old Trafford. This is reported by the Sport Innovation Society."

As of September 2, this information was available on such Russian-language Internet resources as ProstoProSport, KazanFirst, Dynamomania.com, "Rambler / female", XSport. This news also caused a great resonance in the West: for example, it was spread by a Twitter account dedicated to the Portuguese TCR. (224,000 subscribers, 1210 news retweets) and The United Stand - fan club of Ronaldo's current team (748,000 subscribers, 1,449 retweets).

The primary source of the news boom was, as noted in some publications, tweet from Sport Innovation Society - a much more modest resource with less than 27,000 subscribers. However, the name of the 36-year-old Portuguese, who on the same day updated the world record in terms of the number of goals for the national team, has such weight these days that news about him spreads like lightning. However, the sensational tweet soon disappeared and was replaced by message: “We were unable to confirm the authenticity of the message about the Queen and CR7, so we decided to delete the tweet. Sorry". Thus, the message turned out to be an ordinary canard. However, the news could no longer be stopped, and it continued its journey through world information resources.

It should be noted that the British Queen’s “sympathy” for the Red Devils would in itself be quite sensational news. In England, where the issue of football preferences is always quite acute, most members of the royal family carefully hide their preferences, and the Queen is no exception. Passed a few years ago hearingthat she is a fan of the West Ham United club, however, journalists were unable to confirm this information either. Neutrality remains.