Three and in – not just another football blog

What an amazing place Twitter is. A true social media, a great leveller, where the hoi-polloi can mix and engage with heads of state, celebrities from A list to Z, writers, reality TV ‘stars’, sports people and, of course, footballers.

It is a place of intelligent discourse, witty repartee and reasoned, measured debate which improves society and the world we live in. It’s the kind of place where a footballer can create an account and be welcomed generously and openly to the party by fans of the team he plays for. It’s certainly not the kind of place where a footballer can create an account and then shut it down two hours later because he simply can’t be arsed with the invective directed at him.

Oh wait, yes it is.

It’s the kind of place where a footballer’s sister can receive the following message because her famous brother has, apparently, broken up with his old girlfriend started going out with somebody else.

Footballer’s personal lives are of little consequence to me but if you follow the trail of Tweets from the one above you find a strange and frankly discomfiting undercurrent. Fans of players, I understand. Young women who are into these players ‘Beatles style’, I also understand, but some of what you read is really quite disturbing. If this were ‘real’ life you’d be looking at restraining orders and increased security. It’s cyber-stalking and bullying of the worst kind.

Often it’s faceless and anonymous but not always. For some reason Twitter has made people think it’s perfectly ok to eschew all manners and decency. Journalist who writes something fans take exception to? ABUSE. Fan of a team whose opinion differs to that of a fan of the same team? ABUSE. Opposition fans? ABUSE. Footballer who says anything at all? ABUSE.

Today, Bolton striker Kevin Davies announced he was going to quit Twitter. I’m no fan of him as a player but his feed was interesting and intelligent, a decent look into the life of a professional footballer, and far, far removed from inane LOLZy banter of some of the more high profile players. And he’s quitting because of the abuse. Really, who needs it?

Last week I read, rather incredulously, two Arsenal fans argue on Twitter and one of them, quite seriously, decided the best way to solve the problem would be a punch-up in real life. Mad, I know, but on one level that guy had a point. He took exception to some name calling and wondered, quite reasonably in my opinion, if the other guy would have ever called him that to his face. I doubt it. Yet on Twitter anything goes.

There are great things about Twitter. It does bring people together, it does allow you to engage and debate and talk to people you wouldn’t normally have a chance to. More importantly, it allows you to talk with your peers, to discuss football, politics, Glee, whatever. And it opens up a new world of opinion, new cultures, ways of thinking and more.

Yet underneath it all, bubbling just below the surface, is this viciousness, this nastiness that makes you despair at times. In years to come we might discover the best thing about Twitter is that it makes the people who are nothing but spiteful and horrible so easy to identify.  Four step program:

Step 1 - Receive Tweet

Step 2 - Check person’s timeline

Step 3 – Realise person is an angry, bitter, ill-mannered cunt

Step 4 – Block or just ignore

I don’t expect fans of rival teams to be friendly with each other, or with players from rival teams, but it goes beyond that. On a basic human level the lack of manners is a sorry reflection on those involved. You can disagree with somebody without name-calling, you can argue with somebody without abusing them, and you can differ entirely without resorting to half-witted, tedious barbs which lack the intelligence to strike home.

Sometimes it is best, if you’ve got nothing good to say, to say nothing at all. You’re only making yourself look stupid and making it easy for the rest of us to know you are.

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To call us cunts on Twitter, click here.

It’s often said that fans put footballers on pedestals, thinking of them as heroes, untouchable, giants of character and will, and the truth is that they’re not.

They’re the same as all of us, just a lot better at football. So when Ryan Babel tweeted a picture of Howard Webb in a Man United shirt he was just doing what thousands of Liverpool fans did. After bitter defeat we resort to recrimation and anger, to humour and sadness.

Babel’s tweet was misjudged and probably not wise for a Premier League player but in being charged by the FA there’s the danger of a can of worms opening here. After Berbatov’s dive in the game on Sunday, Arsenal keeper Wojciech Szczesny said:

Theo apologised yesterday. Wonder if Berbatov is going to apologise today … I guess that’s why Berbatov played for Spurs.

Very funny if you’re an Arsenal fan, probably not if you’re a United or Spurs fan, and it skirts around the edges of disrepute, based on The FA’s previous in this regard.

Then you have QPR players reacting to El Hadji Diouf’s taunting of Jamie Mackie. The Rangers player broke his leg in a tackle with Gael Givet, the Sengal international took exception to Mackie’s lunge despite the fact he injured himself.

Clint Hill - “That c*** will get what’s coming to him”

Bradley Orr – “You horrible disgusting man E H Diouf! Your time will come!”

Paddy Kenny – “That **** Diouf will get it one day, what goes around comes around.”

Regardless of the exclamation marks you might interpret those as threatening, perhaps inciteful. It’s dangerous ground all the same.

Yet these are human reactions. The same as we might have if we saw a team mate badly injured in a Sunday league game and saw one of the opposition standing over him snarling and spitting.

Yes, social networking allows us greater access to footballers, some of it is very positive, some of it not, but why this faux outrage when we discover they’re just people too? The standards we expect from them as professional footballers are one thing, where is written they ought to better at being people?

I suspect it won’t be long before clubs clamp down quite hard on players Tweeting and Facebooking. Sanitised versions of who they are to protect the image of the club they play for. And in a way I can understand that but what a shame it would be to miss out on the good stuff just because we can’t cope with some of the bad.

No, those of you looking for him to follow will be disappointed. What I meant is he talks about Twitter in the light of some ill-judged Tweeting from Greg Halford.

He told the world, via his 140 characters, that he was sitting at Molineux with Steve Sidwell, leading to lots of speculation that he’d sign for them from Aston Villa. Then Fulham came along and he signed for them instead.

McCarthy said:

They should call it Twatter – and anyone on it should be renamed! Too many tweets make a twat.

It is interesting though. How are football clubs, usually so restrictive in terms of what they allow players to say in public, going to cope with the upsurge in social media? Twitter and Facebook are not going away. Young men are young men and footballers, let’s face it, are not renowned for their tact or discretion at the best of times.

Sometimes they’re going to say things in the heat of the moment. The permanancy of the internet is the issue though. Saying something then deleting it won’t make the slightest difference. As they stand by the now-closed stable door the horse is galloping away into the distance, powered by ‘OMGs’ and RTs. You can’t take it back.

Another interesting angle is the story out of nothing which is becoming more and more prevalent. There’s a good piece on They All Count about football journalists using Twitter for stories based on the random Tweets of footballers. Worth a read.

Bonus reading: Mick McCartree