Fact Check: Lamine Yamal Did NOT Show V Sign To Avoid Shaking Hands With Trump

Does a viral clip accurately document what happened during the 2026 FIFA World Cup award ceremony when Spanish soccer player Lamine Yamal came to the podium to receive a medal from Donald Trump? No, that's not true: Contrary to claims on social media, Yamal didn't refuse to shake hands with U.S. President Donald Trump: their handshake was well-documented by multiple recordings. Posts insisting that Yamal showed the V sign instead spread an AI video.

The claim appeared in a reel (archived here and here) published on Facebook by @rush.darwish.5 on July 19, 2026, under the caption:

Spain Star Lamine Yamal is the people's champion after this snub on Trump 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼

This is what the thumbnail from the reel looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:

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The video published on the day of the 2026 FIFA World Cup final won by Spain (archived here) purported to show that one of the team's players, Lamine Yamal (neither of those is his last name, archived here), allegedly moved his hand away from Trump to show the V sign instead of shaking hands with the U.S. president handing out gold medals.

However, that was not what actually happened.

In this C-SPAN recording, Yamal enters the frame at the 12:52 mark.

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The Spanish player shakes hands with Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA. Then, as Infantino hugs him, Trump extends his hand toward Yamal:

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There is a brief moment of hesitation on Yamal's end, as he seem to have been listening to what Infantino was saying to him, but after that, Yamal shakes hands with Trump:

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Recordings published by Fox 29 Philadelphia (archived here) and "Diario AS" (archived here), a Madrid-based outlet covering soccer, also showed the handshake, not the V sign.

The video reviewed in this fact check showed signs strongly pointing to AI. One was the illegible inscription behind Trump's back:

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Then, Yamal's patch changes its contents in fractions of a second. At first, it shows some abstract shape paired with unreadable letters:

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Then, the word FIFA appears in the patch out of nowhere:

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According to ZeroGPT, the frame purporting to capture Yamal showing the victory sign to Trump to avoid shaking hands with him, was "97% FAKE":

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Both InVID and Sightengine said it was 99% likely to have been generated by AI:

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