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Hello! We’re mourning the passing of peak Football Twitter. And getting our heads around a 22-0 scoreline.

Coming up:

Social Standing: ‘Football Twitter’ changed the game — but now interest is dwindling

Football Twitter, as it’s fondly known, completely changed how we consume the sport — for clubs, their employees, supporters and journalists. The social media platform rolled for 24 hours a day, forcing the news cycle to run in real-time and transforming discourse around the sport.

Its halcyon period — those years when Twitter, or X as it is branded today, was the go-to source for soccer content — began sometime after 2010 and peaked very recently. If you followed the game, you probably had an account and for all its undeniable flaws, no other site offered the same immediacy or engagement, or transfer news on tap. As a writer, it changed the world.

But lately, the bubble has burst. Football Twitter as it was at its height is a thing of the past. It hasn’t disappeared entirely — far from it — but Steve Madeley’s insightful look at the changing face of social sites suggests X has jumped the shark. Footballers post there less and less. One brand specialist told Steve that the Elon Musk-owned firm “is never even a conversation anymore”.

We’re witnessing the end of an era. For one, Musk’s takeover had profound implications for how it works, how it looks and the material it provides. A section of society like the shift. A section of society do not. In itself, X has become a political football where its own merits are debated alongside those of everything else.Moreover, the branding of elite athletes is a whole new industry. Project Erling Haaland, for instance, is aiming to net him £1billion ($1.25bn). Player engagement was a thing of the 2010s. Today, image and self-promotion supersede it. According to those spoken to by Steve, Instagram serves that need so much more — a scene where footballers are happier to reside.

What next for players and clubs?

The value of X to them, however, is clearly falling. While Lionel Messi never joined Twitter, most other leading names did. Jude Bellingham last posted on X in December and Mbappe’s account is sparse, too. Haaland is more prolific, as is Cristiano Ronaldo, but Steve illustrated how that personal, quirky output has dwindled. You no longer get Wayne Rooney offering Rio Ferdinand a lift to Manchester United training.

What’s striking is that clubs themselves show less sign of checking out. You might remember German side St Pauli quitting X in November, via a statement in which they openly criticised Musk’s running of it. Werder Bremen did likewise soon after but if a mass exodus of teams was anticipated, it failed to materialise.

Put simply, X retains far too many users for clubs to give up on it. Despite the birth of Threads and Bluesky, there’s still nothing like it in terms of raw numbers. And performative exits from the site carry risk because, in the words of a Premier League media officer, “there will always be an element of a fanbase that has absolutely no issue with what X is”. Clubs don’t rush to put fans’ noses out of joint.

Football Twitter, in any case, was always too big to migrate elsewhere en masse. As tastes change, it will diversify and split, in part to clubs’ own products and WhatsApp channels. There’s a danger of over-romanticising the phenomenon of X as we once knew it, but it altered the culture of the sport in a way very few things have.

News round-up

• There’s a controversy brewing in Spanish football. Barcelona Femeni’s Mapi Leon stands accused of inappropriately touching Espanyol’s Daniela Caracas during a game. Leon denies wrongdoing and is threatening legal action over the allegations.
• LAFC co-owner Ruben Gnanalingam has apologised after re-sharing anti-Israel messages on LinkedIn. MLS says it is reviewing the situation.
• Just to prove that transfer business doesn’t cease, Aston Villa have finalised a pre-contract deal to sign defender Yasin Ozcan in the summer. He’s 18 and he’ll arrive from Turkish side Kasimpasa.
• He was sacked by Monza at the end of December. Now the Serie A club have rehired Alessandro Nesta as head coach, or “revoked his dismissal” to use their phrase. Perfectly normal behaviour.
• Elsewhere, Brian Priske’s time at Feyenoord (where he replaced Liverpool’s Arne Slot) is over. His exit materialised 48 hours before Feyenoord’s Champions League clash against Milan.

Managing expectations: Ancelotti and Guardiola: Different styles, different treatment

(Gonzalo Arroyo – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)

The Champions League play-offs begin tonight, which means Manchester City must be playing Real Madrid. Five knockout clashes in six years goes way beyond a trilogy. It’s more of a box set.

Rory Smith’s preview is thought-provoking on two counts (Rory’s good like that). Why, for instance, did the coaching fraternity rush to follow the ideological lead of Pep Guardiola but not Carlo Ancelotti, when the latter is a Champions League specialist and holds enough medals to fill a bank vault?

And why is there so much scrutiny on Ancelotti’s position at the Bernabeu, when City’s response to the storm around Guardiola has been to back him with a new contract and a spend of more than £170m in the winter transfer market?

I suppose the answer to riddle two is Madrid’s unceremonious standards. Fly high and the club will keep you well-stocked in cigars. Lose altitude and faith unravels quickly. You don’t get sacred cows in that half of Madrid. Only a well-used chopping block.

Catch A Match

(Selected games, ET/UK)

Champions League play-offs: Brest vs Paris Saint-Germain, 12.45pm/5.45pm — Paramount+/TNT Sports; Juventus vs PSV, 3pm/8pm — Paramount+/TNT Sports; Manchester City vs Real Madrid, 3pm/8pm — Paramount+/Amazon Prime; Sporting CP vs Borussia Dortmund, 3pm/8pm — CBS, Paramount+, Fubo/TNT Sports.

FA Cup fourth round: Exeter City vs Nottingham Forest, 3pm/8pm — ESPN+/ITV.

From The Archives: Arsenal offer Sheffield United rematch after Kanu’s controversial goal

(Tom Honan/EMPICS via Getty Images; design: Sean Reilly)

A bit of nostalgia coming your way now because while scouting around on X earlier, I stumbled across something that caused ructions this week in 1999: a null-and-void FA Cup tie.

It involved Arsenal and Sheffield United, at Arsenal’s old Highbury ground. Arsenal won 2-1 but only by underhand methods. The decisive incident played out like this…

Sheffield United had kicked the ball into touch so an injured player could receive treatment. Convention said Arsenal should gift possession back to them, and Ray Parlour tried — but Nwankwo Kanu ignored protocol and pounced on inaction in United’s defence to set up a tap-in for Marc Overmars.

It all went off and while the goal did not break any rules, a breach of the game’s spirit led to an unprecedented re-match — which Arsenal won 2-1 anyway. Amy Lawrence wrote a great feature on the debacle. Arsenal officials were “horrified”, and United’s Paul Devlin tried to “leave a bit on Overmars” as the forward scored. What a day.

Around TAFC

• Nick Miller took the time to put more meat on the bones of the tale we brought you from Turkey yesterday, where players from Adana Demirspor walked off the pitch in protest at a penalty awarded to Galatasaray. Long story short: Turkish football is consumed by grievances.
• On The Athletic FC Podcast (which is always free to download or watch) we were trying to work out who or what is most at fault for Tottenham Hotspur’s meandering state: injuries, Ange Postecoglou, the players or the board led by Daniel Levy. Ultimately, we didn’t think much of Spurs’ overarching strategy.
• I’m really enjoying Tifo Football’s short content. This video about the famous ‘six-minute match’ between Real Madrid and Real Sociedad sounds like a wind-up.
• Liverpool’s forthcoming schedule is, well, pretty unusual. After 10 Premier League games through January and February, they’ve got just one in March. How’s that happened?
• Most clicked in yesterday’s TAFC: Arne Slot’s squad hitting black ice in Plymouth.

And finally…

Qualifying for the 2025 Under-17 World Cup got underway yesterday. The United States started their campaign with… a 22-0 win over the Virgin Islands. Talk about flogging a dead horse.

If the opposition are to be sniffed at slightly, the statistical facts aren’t. It’s the biggest margin of victory by a U.S. team (men’s or women’s) at any level. Sixteen-year-old Chase Adams, a Columbus Crew kid, scored 10 goals, the most a U.S. player has converted in a qualifying fixture. One of his three hat-tricks was bagged in the space of four minutes.

TAFC felt duty-bound to show off one of his finishes — until we saw the footwork of Pedro Guimaraes (above). Guimaraes finished with a solitary goal — but there’s a lot to be said for quality over quantity.

(Top photo: Alex Pantling/Getty Images)