Debunking The Ridiculous, Racist "Nigeria-Germany" Scoreboard E-Mail Forward

I'm sure you've seen it by now: a purported screenshot from "Nigeria and Germany's World Cup game" that, thanks to some poorly placed country abbreviations, spells out a pretty vile epithet. It's so, so fake, for so many obvious reasons.

Examples of people who neglected to do some basic factchecking here, here, here, here and here.

It's painfully easy to look up Germany's World Cup matches, and what do you know? No Nigeria on their schedule!

But that's actually a meaningless quibble, because the alleged screenshot doesn't even show the Nigerian team at all. Those clearly aren't Nigeria's colors, or their flag. It's actually the flag and kit of Niger, a completely different nation. (In addition, Nigeria is abbreviated NGA by FIFA.)

So, okay, now you're feeling a little dumb, but Nigeria, Niger, what's the difference? In their 102 years of existence, the German National Team has never once played Niger. Go ahead. Look it up yourself.

So it's fake, but it's not a photoshop. Go watch a couple seconds of gameplay from EA Sports' , and notice the scoreboard. Yes, it's a closely cropped screenshot from a video game.

It's definitely not the scenario put forth by one enthusiastic emailer: "dont have a screenshot or anything, but when NIGERIA played GERMANY, ESPN displayed NIG - GER on the screen for like 2 hours. i refuse to believe that was an accident." He's half right.