‘Hacked’ Real Madrid twitter account announces Lionel Messi signing

Real Madrid’s official Twitter account seems to have been been hacked, after a post welcoming Lionel Messi to the club appeared on their feed.

Just days after Barcelona’s account was taken over by hackers OurMine, which announced Paris St Germain’s Angel Di Maria had joined the club as a hoax, the group was at it again, this time on the Champions League winners’ account.

At 5.30am BST, accompanied by a video of Messi scoring for Barcelona against Real Madrid, a post on Real’s Twitter said: “Benvingut Messi! ¡Bienvenido Messi! Welcome Messi! Bienvenue Messi! #Messi.”

The group, which has hacked a series of high-profile accounts over the past 12 months, then followed it up with a series of tweets claiming responsibility for the hacking, saying: “Internet security is s*** and we proved that.”

The post went viral, with over 27,000 retweets in the first 45 minutes of it being up.