Early on Saturday afternoon, a ton of articles started appearing claiming that Claudio Ranieri had told Italian sports site/paper Gazetta dello Sport ‘It’s all true’ in regards to Arsenal’s Jamie Vardy bid.
I wanted to read the original, mindful of how twisted comments can get, so I opened up one piece and went looking for a link to the original source. It wasn’t there.
So I opened another. Nothing.
And another. And another. And, well, you get the picture. It wasn’t just small sites, either. The Express did it too.
I then went to Twitter. Perhaps Gazetta had tweeted it. They hadn’t. But maybe someone else on Twitter had tweeted a link to this piece which seems to claim so much. Nope.
So I asked the DailyCannon hive-mind and the only links they could find was to another Italian site, Calciomercato.it, and who do they say their source is? Yep, you guessed it, Gazetta della Sport.
Seeing reports Ranieri allegedly told Gazaetta dellow Sport 'It's all true'…no links in the pieces and I can't find it on the Italian site
— Daily Cannon (@DailyCannon) June 4, 2016
No, they didn’t provide a link either.
Of course, this doesn’t mean it isn’t true, it just means that a load of websites are quoting Claudio Ranieri without even taking two minutes to check if he really did say what they claim he is saying nor bother to try and find the original source to provide for their readers.
Tut tut.
If you do find the link on Gazetta, please let us know and we’ll dig into it more. Thanks!