The blur between pro and private; tweeting within English football

Sports July 27, 2011 2 Comments

With a new football season approaching, the usual topics are being discussed. The transfer market and who’s going where for what price, pre-season friendlies, injury concerns and what the squad will be when they start their respective campaigns.

But another topic has been surfacing alongside these has been twitter and not for positive reasons. Over the past year or two, stories about what footballer tweeted what and clubs reactions have become a major part of football news with the focus placed further on what players tweet after a match and their reaction.

In the English Premier League, Wolves manager, Mick McCarthy, signalled his intention to clamp down on the site after a “disgruntled numpty” as he put it, tweeted information that ended up ruining a proposed transfer. His answer to these problems was to bring in a media law firm to brief his players about the pros and cons of using twitter while playing professionally.

Also, Championship team, Leeds United, like other English teams such as QPR, have banned club’s players from using Twitter after their striker, Davide Somma, tweeted he would miss the next six months after suffering cruciate ligament damage. The reasoning for this was that such information should have gone through the proper channels before the news was made public.

Wolves manager, Mick McCarthy, has brought in a legal law firm to educate players about Twitter.

Professional teams can be similar to companies in which they have an image to upkeep yet while most companies can work in the background, the staff of football teams perform in the public eye. Many if not all of the professional English teams have twitter accounts promoting the club, their team, matches, causes and merchandise to name but a few.

On the other end of the spectrum, players like Wayne Rooney, Michael Owen, Cesc Fabregas, Jack Wilshere and Darren Bent have their own personal accounts, allowing fans a glimpse into their lives and discovering what makes them tick. Yet when the lines between professional and private conduct become blurred either intentionally or not, players have to be careful about what they say and who they affect.

Tweeting etiquette

A good place for players to learn how to conduct themselves for their club would be to look at the BBC and the guidelines it placed for staff in news. Basically its main rule of thumb is the phrase: “Don’t say anything stupid” and not to say anything that compromises your impartiality. While the latter might not strictly apply considering that players are going to side with the team they play for (in most cases), it’s useful to have such guidelines and draw a line for what can and can’t be said in public.

However in saying this, sports are charged by emotion and at the best of times, some won’t think twice about venting their frustrations online, sometimes landing them in hot water.

One such incident occurred after Liverpool’s defeat to Manchester United in an FA Cup match. After the game, Ryan Babel tweeted a mocked-up picture showing match referee, Howard Webb, in a Manchester Utd jersey and saying “And they call him one of the best referees? That’s a joke. SMH (shaking my head).” Although Babel apologised, the FA decided to fine him £10,000 on the grounds that players should have respect for the referee and his decisions.

Ryan Babel was fined £10,000 by the FA for tweeting an inappropiate message depicting a referee in a Manchester Utd jersey.

Basically because you can tweet without any physical interaction, the idea of what you share with your followers on Twitter, you share with the world can be lost, resulting in such situations occurring. Because of Twitter’s immediate and snappy style, considering the weight of what you could be tweeting is easily lost after you hit the send button, although that presents another set of problems for players.

Tweeting abuse

While you can control what your players can and can’t say, this doesn’t apply to the general public. At matches alone, players can be subjected to verbal abuse by the opposition (or worse their own fans if they aren’t performing) while they are playing is difficult enough to handle.

Yet outside the pitch, Twitter can and has left players open to the kind of criticism that arguably wouldn’t be heard if the internet didn’t physically separate those writing and receiving the message.

Darron Gibson claimed to have closed his twitter account because it wasn't worth the hassle, although the abusive messages he received suggests differently.

One such example was Ireland and Manchester United player, Darron Gibson. Two hours after joining the site, Gibson had closed his account and left. The reason being the abuse he received by fans, the nicest insult he received was “the biggest compliment I can give you is that you are better than Carrick.” It was claimed that Gibson went off the site because he received so many notifications of people joining by SMS that he felt it wasn’t the hassle but nobody would be surprised if the comments affected him in some way.

Bolton captain Kevin Davies, having won fans for his honest approach and how he regularly interacted with his followers, tweeted back in May that he wasn’t going to update his account any longer saying that “[it] is partly due to abuse that nobody needs really.” He has left one response since then but his account is still active for when he decides to go back and brave the world of Twitter again.

Those who justify such comments will point out that they are paid professionals and should be able to handle criticism but criticism doesn’t mean comments that only aim to belittle or insult a person. No profession would allow statements like such to be said and how you approach such a problem fairly when such opinions can easily be spread online is difficult to say.

But maybe that’s part and parcel of such careers, public careers will always be open to public scrutiny regardless of whether it’s deserved or not. There will always be a certain faction who will
scream and shout abuse, either verbally or digitally, at other but everyone could focus more on how to handle such comments since chasing the people behind such statements would prove to be an impossible task.

When both the public and players themselves remember that their words could be interpreted as something more than just a throwaway comment, then navigating Twitter may become easier for all. But let’s just finish with opinionated Blackpool manager, Ian Holloway, who’s happy to give his thoughts on anything he asked, which includes Twitter and the Ryan Babel incident mentioned above.

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