The age of a simple column in a newspaper setting out players for the next days’ match are long gone. Player tweets, ‘X’ posts, instagram accounts and ‘insider’ knowledge is now the norm and we all look to pick up insights to pass on to supporters. The trouble is, now the players themselves are regularly involved in this kind of ‘footie-flirting’ – passing veiled or inconclusive fitness reports to their own followers – it becomes much more of a minefield as far as trying to forecast who’s in and who’s out.
Take West Ham’s visit to Spurs on Saturday. One one hand we have the reports detailing injuries, sites from ‘doctors’ advising caution returning from injury, and club insiders confirming or otherwise the likely participation of Spurs’ captain Son Heung Min.
On the other, the players themselves now add to the mix.
Media reports today are awash following Son’s two word post on his instagram account :
‘Back soon’ taken by Spurs sites to mean their captain will be back for the visit of The Hammers.
Niclas Fullkrug’s post last week has been, equally, leapt upon by Hammers fans as positive news that he’s really about to jump forth from the bench:
‘Can’t wait to be back > Soon” Is the caption Fullkrug used last week.
Both players are aware of the power of social media – keeping their followers engaged has become the name of the day with both posting upbeat but completely inconclusive messages. For either Spurs fans to leap on two words as a sign that their captain will be back in five days time – or for Fullkrug followers and West Ham United supporters to believe that ‘Soon’ means North London on Saturday is a long ‘reach’.
Symptom of the times we live in, yes, but also the complexity of trying to find the reality amongst a sandstorm of social media sound. Disinformation – probably not – just boredom from players with too little training on their radar. From past experience with players teasing on social media, both would seem to have too much time on their hands and so my guess is that neither of them start. We’ll see soon enough.