With the Premier League season back underway this weekend, those who don’t follow football closely might assume that discussion about the sport takes something of a back seat during the summer. With no action taking place on the pitch, it might be expected that there isn’t a lot to reflect on and talk about.
In reality, football’s close season is a time for rumours and anticipation, meaning there is always plenty to chew the fat on. Whether it’s new signings, managerial changeovers or predictions for the season ahead, footballers, clubs and sports reporters need to have their fingers on the social media button as much during the summer as at any time of year.
Of course, with the amount they churn out, it doesn’t always go to plan, and the Twitterverse is always quick to pick up on any slip-ups that take place. Here are three that caught our eye during what you might expect to be football’s quieter months:
1. Daley Blind makes copy and paste gaffe
It’s not surprising that many footballers find it hard to make time for tweeting and posting in between their many day-to-day commitments, so they often get somebody else to put their tweets together for them. One player who seems to go down this route is Manchester United defender Daley Blind, but he could have made it a little less obvious than he did last month.
Sharing a picture of himself in United’s new third kit, the Dutchman began an Instagram post with the words:
“Hi mate, would you be ok posting this image on your social media channels with the following copy?”
He quickly deleted the botched post, but not quickly enough to avoid social media scorn.
2. Scottish club ‘likes’ inappropriate video
There’s no law saying football clubs have to tweet entirely about football, and some clubs are able to strike up a nice mix of banter and engagement by drifting a little off-topic from time to time.
However, The Daily Record noted that Scottish Championship club Inverness Caledonian Thistle took this to extremes this summer by ‘liking’ a pornographic video. This lead the club to issue a statement announcing that an investigation was underway to try and find out how and why the “inappropriate and unacceptable” activity happened.
3. Musician mistaken for Manchester United signing
In early July, Irish newspaper The Herald somehow confused grime artist Stormzy with Belgian striker Romelu Lukaku, printing a picture of the former to accompany a story about the latter’s move from Everton to Manchester United.
Though the mistake happened in physical print, it was on Twitter where it escalated. Social media revellers had a field day over the incident, even if Stormzy himself insisted he “didn’t find none of it” amusing.
https://twitter.com/Stormzy1/status/884397792151646209?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fviral%2F395864-lukaku-stormzy-soccer-transfer%2F
All this is a reminder that mistakes happen, and social media can be very unforgiving about them, meaning it’s best to check your posts and tweets extremely carefully before releasing them into cyberspace.
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