HOW TWITTER HAS TAKEN OVER MY FOOTBALLING LIFE

Liverpool have signed Kun Aguero, one of the most highly-rated talents in world football (and also Diego Maradona’s son-in-law).  You might have missed this news in your usual media outlets.  I only know because I saw a tweet from  @redman88.  It must be true, because he also tweeted that we had signed Luis Suarez, at least a week before this became public knowledge.

Kun Aguero: probably not going to Liverpool

In truth, as any Liverpool Twitter addict would know, @redman88 has also claimed we have signed Ashley Young, Aaron Lennon, Eden Hazard and dozens of other exciting European players over the last few months and at the time of writing, none of them have actually put pen to paper.  It is fair to say, even with the optimism generated by the new American owners and manager Kenny Dalglish, it is highly improbable they all will.  

For a whole generation of fans, Twitter has changed the way we follow soccer.  Like many other sports, Twitter has enabled fans to have a much closer relationship with their high-profile idols.  In England, soccer players with Twitter accounts can communicate their true feelings directly to their tens of thousands of followers, something that has often led to bizarre results.  Many players have landed themselves in hot water with their (quite literally) uncensored tweets.

In the last year alone at Liverpool, Glen Johnson had to remove a tweet that responded to criticism from Paul Merson by describing the pundit as an ‘alcoholic drug abuser’ who was ‘average at the best of times’.  Perhaps Ryan Babel’s most memorable contribution in a red shirt was to tweet a doctored photograph of Howard Webb refereeing in a Manchester United shirt in the aftermath of an FA Cup tie earlier this year.  The rookie Jonjo Shelvey was forced to apologise after a picture of someone’s genitals appeared on his twitter page.

But another, far more addictive way it has changed the way you follow your team is that it has provided a platform for a whole legion of people who claim to be ‘in the know’.   The problem, of course, lies in being able to distinguish between those who actually are in the know, and those who actually know almost nothing.  The vast majority of twitterers are like my friend @redman88 – they quite clearly have no inside information whatsoever.  These people adopt a scattergun approach: the more players they claim are about to sign for your club, the more chance they have of getting the odd one right.   Others, like those journalists with Twitter accounts, are able to communicate more reliable information by virtue of having formal lines of communication with the club.  But this is usually the less juicy stuff, like injury updates or interviews with players.  Tantalisingly, however, just occasionally you stumble upon people who fall into neither category, and genuinely appear to have some form of intimate access to club information. 

It is the search for tweets from this latter account that has begun to take over my life.  In the depths of the Roy Hodgson era, the highlight was finding an account that consistently and accurately predicted Liverpool’s starting eleven three hours before a match actually started.  Towards the end of Hodgson’s period in charge, with each bad result I obsessively checked Twitter for news of his sacking and had to endure numerous false dawns, until finally I found out the news from Twitter in bed on a Saturday morning.  In January my girlfriend despaired as I lay in bed every night checking for breaking news on Fernando Torres, Suarez and then Andy Carroll.  Each morning I have breakfast whilst looking for people who claim to know who our targets are for the summer, and whether any deals have already been agreed.

It is tempting to see this as a new phenomenon, the product of a digital age in which information – any information – is valued above all else.  Yet soccer fans have always been obsessive about finding out information about their clubs.  In my youth I was just as committed to thumbing through the sports sections of various newspapers.  It is not the obsessiveness of fans that has changed, but the medium.  In many ways, Twitter is like having the ultimate friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend who claims they know someone from inside the club.  Alongside its minute-by-minute updates, what makes it so addictive for soccer fans is the knowledge that whilst the mast majority of tweets are going to be complete fabrication, out there somewhere is a tweet from someone who really is ‘in the know’. 

With regard to Aguero, I’m still looking for more information.  But in the off chance he does sign, remember where you heard it first.

The names of all tweeters have been changed to protect their embarrassment.