It began with a social media post and snowballed into international football news and a meme fest, but it was a prank.
On July 4, the All India Football Federation (AIFF) posted on Instagram: “WE ARE HIRING! Head Coach - Senior Men’s National Team.”
Cut to a few days ago, when a national daily quoted the director of the Indian football team, former goalkeeper Subrata Paul, as saying that the AIFF had received an application from Xavi Hernandez and that the Barcelona legend had shown significant interest.
“It’s correct that Xavi’s name was there,” Paul was quoted as saying. “The application was emailed to the AIFF.”
The same article said the AIFF’s technical committee “did not consider Xavi for the final shortlist due to the high financial cost”.
The football world sat up.
“REVEALED: Xavi had applied for the job of head coach of the Indian National Team. The Federation turned down the opportunity as they couldn’t afford the financial terms of the deal. It was beyond their reach,” wrote Fabrizio Romano, an Italian sports journalist whose YouTube channel has 2.7 million followers.
The internet erupted with memes.
Now, a 19-year-old student at VIT Vellore has claimed he pranked the AIFF.
The student told The Telegraph Online that he created a fake email id, xaviofficialfcb@gmail.com, and gave a prompt to ChatGPT: “Write an email by Xavi Hernandez expressing his interest to coach the Indian football team.”
He said he sent it to the AIFF twice – on July 4 and 5.
“I copy pasted the [ChatGPT] response and mailed it. I didn’t attach a CV or anything but I think they saw the mail,” the student said.
Screenshots of the two mails sent to AIFF from the fake email id
He shared screenshots of the email he purportedly sent to the AIFF.
Within 24 hours of the Xavi “news”, people close to him told journalists that the former Barcelona midfielder never applied to be India’s head coach. They believed the AIFF used his name as a marketing campaign, some reports said.
Then one X user shared a screenshot of the fake email.
The AIFF has accepted that they could not confirm the authenticity of the applications. And even “Pep Guardiola” had applied.
"The AIFF received an e-mail furnishing the applications from Spanish coaches Pep Guardiola and Xavi Hernandez. The authenticity of their applications could not be confirmed, and it has since emerged that the e-mail applications were not genuine," the AIFF said in a statement on Saturday.
The Vellore student said he did not send the Pep Guardiola email.
Currently ranked at 133 in the FIFA global rankings, the Indian football team has been without a manager since July 2.
