What does “carnada” mean in Spanish?

Carnada literally means “bait” — what you thread onto a fishhook — but Spanish speakers stretch it figuratively to mean someone used as a decoy or pretext. In this viral clip, Messi’s young son Mateo raises his hand for the match net after a game, and the net-cutter hands it to a cameraman instead — Mateo, it turns out, was carnada, used to draw attention so an older fan could grab the net.

The figurative sense works the same way in English — “bait-and-switch,” or using someone as “bait” to get someone else’s attention — so carnada translates almost one-to-one. You’ll hear it in sports, politics, and everyday gossip whenever someone suspects they’re being used as a stand-in for someone else’s real goal.