Claim: Viral reports on social media claim that the Saudi club, Al-Nassr, terminated a player’s contract for refusing to hand over his jersey number to Cristiano Ronaldo.
Verdict: The reports are false. The said player is still with the club and has been handed a new jersey number.
Full Text
Reports are rife on social media about Al-Nassr FC, a Saudi Arabia Football club, terminating the contract of its player, Jaloliddin Masharipov, for refusing to hand over his jersey number to Cristiano Ronaldo.
Jaloliddin Masharipov, an Uzbek professional footballer, before Al-Nassr signed Ronaldo, was wearing the number 7 jersey at the club.
However, when the club announced its deal with the Portugal captain, Ronaldo was seen with his iconic number 7 jersey.
It is unclear what may have fueled the reports of the alleged dismissal of Jaloliddin Masharipov.
Several social media accounts, including verified ones, that were found to have shared the report can be found here, here, and here.
Verification
We first checked with the club’s website to authenticate if the club had made any publication to give the viral claims any merit, but we found none.
In the team’s list of first-team players, which does not include Ronaldo, we found Jaloliddin Masharipov listed among them at the time of this report.
We visited Jaloliddin’s Instagram profile, and he indicated that he was a “football player of Al-Nassr FC.”
Several recent posts he had made confirmed that he was still with the club. He realised that he was now assigned the number 77 jersey.
In one of the photos posted on January 4, 2023, he was with the club’s recent signing-in event.
A screenshot of a post made by Jaloliddin. The image was retrieved on January 5, 2023.
We also found him among recent pictures posted by the club after a training session.
Screenshot of a post made by Al-Nassr on social media. The player marked with a blue circle is Jaloliddin Masharipov.
Conclusion
The club has not terminated the contract of Jaloliddin Masharipov for refusing to hand over the number 7 jersey to Ronaldo. He is still with the club and has been assigned a new jersey number.
