What is it with footballers and Twitter? This is a relationship that has already passed through the giddiness of instant passion, past the deeper notes of gathering dependency and now seems to be showing the first signs of damaging obsession. On Monday, England under-21 international Marvin Sordell became the first footballer described – by his own manager Dougie Freedman – as suffering "an addiction" to Twitter. "There have been small issues off the field with his tweeting, let's not hide, and we're trying to deal with it," said the Bolton Wanderers boss. "It could be bordering on an obsession with Twitter and Facebook and all the things that go on with these kids."
Ah yes: these kids. Some reports have suggested Freedman has now confiscated his player's phone in a bid to break the cycle of micro-blogging that has seen Sordell send a frankly rather so-so 5,306 tweets in two years (sample tweets: "I am who I am …" and "Hahahahahaa :)"). Addiction might be pushing it, but what is certain is that Sordell's plight emphasises again how thoroughly entwined football and Twitter remain.
It has been a beautifully fruitful relationship from the start, football's natural habitat of foaming rage, weak jokes and baseless gossip entirely suited to the medium. Among English footballers Wayne Rooney has 5.5 million followers, while otherwise marginal figures such as Joey Barton (1.8 million followers) and barely glimpsed Arsenal reserve Emmanuel Frimpong (590,000 followers) have concocted buoyant second lives out of the fug of smartphone-based social media.
In spite of which, and with Sordell's plight in mind, there is more to football and Twitter than simply gossip. Footballers are often terribly isolated young men, their lives an unceasing rotation of hotel rooms, luxury travel and abrasive male banter and, outside this, the gilded alienation of a media-managed existence. Twitter can cast a grappling hook across this divide. There have been plenty of examples of too much sharing (Liverpool's Jonjo Shelvey is one of several players to have erroneously posted a self-shot penis-picture). Mainly, though, and beyond the obvious self-marketeers, there is often a sense of footballers taking some comfort in a form of technology that reverses just a little the sense of industrial isolation. One of Sordell's last tweets reads: "Just watched the impossible. It was unbelievable!! One of the most moving films ive ever seen Such a sad story". You said it, Marvin.
