A picture of a group of Real Madrid players performing prayers has spread on social media platforms, in a scene that at first glance appeared to be documenting a spiritual moment before facing Bayern Munich.
Publishers claimed that the image shows Real Madrid's "Muslim" players, including Moroccan Brahim Diaz, Turk Arda Guler, German Antonio Rudiger, and Frenchman Yerland Mendy, performing prayers inside the team's dressing room, before the crucial match against Bayern Munich scheduled for Wednesday evening at the Allianz Arena in the second leg of the Champions League quarter-finals.
The post was accompanied by the phrase: "Real Madrid players arrive at the team's hotel in Munich before facing Bayern in the Champions League quarter-finals," which gave the image a great boost and a push for rapid spread.
But closer examination of the details revealed that the image had no relation to reality, and that it was produced by artificial intelligence tools.
Upon careful analysis of the circulated image, a number of contradictions and conclusive evidence emerge, confirming that it is a digitally generated image created by artificial intelligence tools and has no relation to reality. In terms of location, the image shows the players inside a professionally equipped changing room, while the original post indicates that the prayer was held in the team's hotel, a place that does not usually have such specialized facilities. Also, a trademark resembling the Liverpool FC logo appeared on the prayer mat on which Arda Güler was performing the prayer, a detail that is completely strange and illogical in the context of Real Madrid players. Moreover, two players appeared in the background performing the prayer in short sportswear ("shorts") that do not conform to the known etiquette of performing the prayer. In addition, the features of the additional players in the background appeared blurred and unidentified, a visual characteristic common in AI-generated images that often suffer from distortions in secondary facial details.
The crux of this evidence is that none of the players mentioned in the picture – Brahim Diaz, Arda Guler, Antonio Rudiger, and Ferland Mendy – posted this snapshot on their official social media accounts, despite some of them having previously shared snapshots reflecting their religious commitment with their followers, especially Rudiger, who used to document moments from the month of Ramadan.
What is most significant is that the religious affiliation of these players is not uniform. While Arda Guler and Antonio Rudiger are known to have converted to Islam and announced it publicly, neither Brahim Diaz, despite holding Moroccan citizenship in addition to Spanish, nor Ferland Mendy have ever announced or even hinted in their official publications that they belong to Islam, which makes the assumption that they would perform a group prayer in this way completely out of the question.
