No evidence Frank Lampard made these comments about Ronaldo and FIFA corruption

A Facebook post claims that former Chelsea manager Frank Lampard said football body FIFA “hates” Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo and is “corrupted”. 

The post, versions of which have been shared tens of thousands of times across Facebook, claims Mr Lampard said “I do not know how Ronaldo won even 5 Ballon d'ors in the era of corrupted FIFA, Ronaldo winning 5 Ballon d'ors is like winning 50 Ballon d'ors as we can see there, they do politics and they favour only one person everytime [sic] ....and criteria also changes every year only for that person.”

As far as we can tell, Mr Lampard did not say this. 

The quote appeared on social media on 30 November 2021, shortly after Lionel Messi was awarded this year’s prize, and Ronaldo placed sixth, and quickly spread among supporter groups on Facebook. 

The earliest instance of this quote appears to come from this Facebook page earlier the same day. When asked, the owners of the page refused to tell Full Fact where the quote came from. 

We emailed another Facebook group, who received more than 15,000 likes for posting the quote. We didn’t receive a reply but the group deleted its post after we contacted them.  

We cannot find any legitimate source for the quote.  

The Ballon d’Or, referenced in the post, is a prestigious footballing title awarded by French sports publication France Football. Ronaldo has received the second highest number of Ballon D’Ors; Messi has won the most.

FIFA was associated with the award but only from 2010 to 2015, co-awarding the prize on six occasions.