Written by: Etrit Rexhepi
An image is circulating on social media depicting a football fan picking up trash at a stadium.
It is alleged that the same person is a Kosovar fan after the football match between Slovakia and Kosovo, which took place on Thursday (March 26).
These claims have been raised by various Albanian-language Facebook pages (here, here, here, here).
What is the truth?
Hibrid.info has investigated this claim, and found that the image in question has been manipulated.
According to the findings, it appears that the original image belongs to Japanese fans who cleaned the stands of the Al-Janoub Stadium in Qatar after the match with Croatia during the Qatar 2022 World Cup, in December of the same year.
The person who appears closest in the original image has had the flag on his back changed from the Japanese one to the Kosovo one. The person in question also has another flag placed on his back, but only the color has been changed, from red to blue.
Hibrid.info has researched the available "tools" for identifying digitally manipulated content or through Artificial Intelligence, but they do not provide clear data on the manipulated content.
However, through a manual search in the Google search engine, when the image depicting the fan with the Kosovo flag is uploaded, the results yield the original image published by various international media outlets, including the Associated Press (here).
What do the claims of Albanian-language pages say?
On the page called "Papirus Newspaper", it is written: "Slovak policeman gets emotional, posts photo from stand cleaned by Kosovo fans after match"🫶. What a gesture he writes.
On the page called "Mitrovica Lajm", it is written: "EXAMPLE: Slovak policeman gets emotional, posts photo from the stands cleaned by Kosovo fans after the match. What gesture does he write?"
On the page called "Islamic Life", it is written: "Slovak policeman gets emotional, posts photo from stands cleaned by Kosovo fans after match. What gesture does he write?"
On the page called "60 seconds", it says: "Slovak policeman gets emotional, posts photo from stand cleaned by Kosovo fans after match. What gesture does he write?"
In all four posts, the writing is almost the same, referring to the "Slovak policeman", but there is no reliable source of information.
Analyze:
An image is being shared on social media, purportedly showing a Kosovo fan cleaning the stadium stands after the match between Slovakia and Kosovo, held on Thursday (March 26, 2026), in Bratislava.
Hibrid.info has investigated this claim and found it to be untrue, but manipulated either digitally or through AI. The real image shows Japanese fans cleaning up trash after the match with Croatia, held in December 2022 as part of the Qatar 2022 World Cup.
Based on its work methodology, Hibrid.info qualifies this content as "Fraud" and "Manipulation of facts".
Reasoning:
The “Deception” rating is given to informational content that is manipulated in terms of visual (deepfake, cheapfake), audio, or textual content to deceive the audience. This form of deception is usually used to produce false and manipulated content.
“Factual manipulation” is a rating given to informational content that uses facts known to be accurate but interprets them in a distorted manner. These reports typically use accurate information to draw incorrect conclusions or claims, thereby misleading consumers of media content about the actual meaning of the facts presented.