Football, football or fútbol: whatever you call it, you probably know one of the sport’s most famous players: Cristiano Ronaldo. But did the Portuguese captain, known for breaking records, refuse to wear a pro-LGBTQ armband during a European tournament?
“During Euro 2020, UEFA (European Football Association) ordered all team captains to wear ‘OneLove’ bands. The band was used as a symbol of the LGBTQ community,” it reads in the caption of a June 16 Facebook post, “but Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo was the only European captain not to wear the headband.” The caption of the post was later changed to indicate that Ronaldo had chosen not to wear the armband.
Euro 2020 was a continent-wide football tournament organized by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) in June 2021. A handful of team captains wore LGBTQ support armbands during the tournament, but this was not universal among the 24 teams. A UEFA spokesperson confirmed to PolitiFact that there are no rules requiring captains to wear such an armband.
We found several images from the 2020 tournament of other captains without a rainbow or pro-LGBTQ+ armband.
Players who wore pro-LGBTQ+ armbands, namely Netherlands team captain Gini Wijnaldum, England captain Harry Kane and Neuer, made headlines for it.
UEFA initially launched an investigation into Neuer’s armband to determine whether it violated rules on political statements, according to ESPN, but the group dropped its investigation.
The “One Love” armbands mentioned in the Facebook post are part of a campaign launched in 2020 by the Dutch Football Association to combat discrimination in football. The movement has become more visible in the run-up to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Before the World Cup, several European team captains agreed to wear the “One Love” headband, but backed out after FIFA threatened to give them yellow cards. Ronaldo was not one of the seven captains who signed up to wear the armband.
Ronaldo wasn’t the ‘only’ team captain not to wear a rainbow armband at Euro 2020; most captains didn’t. Those who did so, like Neuer, were investigated by UEFA. We rate this erroneous claim by Facebook as false.
