Fact Check: FIFA Will NOT Keep Pele's Feet In Its Museum

Fact Check

  • by: Courtney Kealy
Fact Check: FIFA Will NOT Keep Pele's Feet In Its Museum FIFA Says No

Will FIFA (the Federation Internationale de Football Association) keep Pele's feet in its museum? No, that's not true: A FIFA spokesperson who replied to a Lead Stories query by email on January 5, 2023, said, "We completely refute this claim."

The claim appeared in a tweet (archived here) published on January 3, 2023. The tweet's text, under adjacent photos of Pele and two bare feet, said:

BREAKING FIFA WILL KEEP PELE'S FEET IN THE MUSEUM . PELE'S FAMILY HAS GIVEN THE PERMISSION.

This is what the post looked like on Twitter at the time of writing:

Twitter screenshot

(Source: Twitter screenshot taken on Thu Jan 5 18:05:59 2023 UTC)

Pele, considered by many to be the best soccer player of all time, was buried on January 3, 2023, in Santos, Brazil, after he died at age 82, from colon cancer.

As for the claim that Pele's feet will be displayed in the FIFA Museum, the FIFA spokesperson wrote on January 5, 2023:

We completely refute this claim.

The claim in the tweet is attributed to "tnt_sport_brazil." A search on tntsports.com.br yielded no results to support this claim. There are no press releases, announcements or news items on the official FIFA site about this. A search on the official FIFA Museum website also yielded no results.

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  Courtney Kealy

Courtney Kealy is a writer and fact-checker at Lead Stories. A graduate of Columbia University’s School of Journalism, she specializes in national and foreign affairs with more than two decades experience in the Middle East. Her work has appeared on FOX News, AlJazeera America, ABC News, the New York Times, Marie Claire, Time and Newsweek.

Read more about or contact Courtney Kealy

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