Ronaldo's Golden Boot donation to Palestine a false alarm

Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo is reported to have auctioned the European Golden Boot that he won in 2011 with the La Liga club, handing the proceeds, said to be around £1.4 million, to a cause supporting Palestine children.

Rumours of the Portuguese superstar’s generosity kicked off on Twitter earlier today, with handles like Football Jokes tweeting about Ronaldo’s auctioning of his Golden Shoe.

This was followed by a few articles on sites like Target Football, which said that Ronaldo had raised the funds through the club’s charity foundation to help schools in the troubled Gaza city.

However, the story reeks of a hoax, with neither Real Madrid’s official site validating the news, nor any major Spanish daily covering it, as reported in many of the articles reporting the story. Also, the likelihood of Indonesian site Tribunnews being one of the first to report the news of Ronaldo’s ‘generous donation’ makes the whole story more make-believe than genuine news.

No confirmation has come from Ronaldo’s official Twitter handle either.

Also supporting claims of a falsification are stories in the past that have linked Lionel Messi with the Palestinian cause, which later have been called by many sections of the media as a hoax.