Twitter changed Football. The risk is X will do it again

The risk is that football's relationship with Twitter is now so embedded, its addiction so deep, that it is particularly vulnerable to the platform's sudden -- and apparently deliberate -- volatility.

It may not quite qualify as a Silicon Valley parable, but it does not fall too far short. It is impossible, now, to imagine the social platform X -- the thing that we all still think of, reflexively, as Twitter -- without that distinctive, pointed ouroboros nestled at the foot of each post, the one that serves as a gauge, a currency and a vector of virality.

The retweet -- the capacity to share, quickly and easily, a contribution that you enjoy or endorse or otherwise wish to bring to the attention of others -- was the innovation that made Twitter work. It gave a niche idea its purpose, turning a curious app into a transformative social, cultural and political force and, eventually, a billionaire's plaything.

It was not, though, deliberate. Retweeting was not designed by the cadre of developers who founded Twitter. It did not exist in the early versions of the app. There was, in its first iterations, no way of amplifying the best (or, later, worst) content that emerged from the doomscroll. The app's founders had not, it seems likely, considered what their invention would be for.

Instead, the retweet was the brainchild of the platform's early adopters, "bootstrapping a tool for spreading news and popular posts," as journalist Taylor Lorenz writes in Extremely Online, her history of social media and the rise of influencer culture. "Twitter did not integrate retweeting into its product until late 2009," almost three years after its launch, she notes.

Lorenz's book is full of stories like this. YouTube was initially designed to be a dating site. Instagram's founders were intensely wary of advertising and product promotion, fearing that the venal impulses of capitalism might interfere with their app's aesthetics. LinkedIn was not built for finance bros to brag about "the grind."

These platforms, whatever the original motivation behind their development, were shaped by the people who spent time on them, who gradually became addicted to them. The founders built the infrastructure -- and have been amply rewarded for it -- but the users determined the purpose and the utility.

That has been true, certainly, within football. That sports in general is almost entirely absent from Lorenz's book -- a better reviewer than me might point out that it is a little light on the whole misinformation business, too -- is not a surprise. Social media is a misnomer; despite the name, our experience of it is wholly idiosyncratic. Lorenz does not, I would guess, get that many Gary Neville clips on her various feeds.

Still, it is a noteworthy omission. That is partly just a matter of raw numbers: A far greater proportion of users than the people who run these apps seem to realize are there less to discuss wild conspiracy theories about Brazilian jurisprudence and more to find out who Joao Félix is signing for this summer.

But it is also because of the effects. The world's most popular pastime has been irrevocably shaped by its exposure to social media over the last two decades or so. The way the game is followed, the way it is consumed, even -- to some extent -- the way it is played all bear the marks of Silicon Valley's unseen hand.

That is true, in particular, of what has always been the sport's platform of choice: Twitter. Football's early brushes with the platform were uneasy: When Dutch forward Ryan Babel was fined for publishing a doctored photograph of referee Howard Webb in a Manchester United jersey on his feed early in 2011, most clubs were of the view that this newfangled "microblogging website" was more trouble than it was worth.

Football soon overcame its nerves. The following year, Eden Hazard announced his move from Lille to Chelsea on Twitter. "I'm signing for the Champions League winner," he wrote. By 2017, Manchester United and Adidas were designing the announcement of Paul Pogba's transfer to play out on social media; a few months later, Twitter granted Pogba his own emoji.

More than Instagram and, later, TikTok, football and Twitter felt like a natural fit. It worked for the clubs, who could use it not only to circumvent legacy media but to calculate and expand their global popularity. It worked for the players, who could build their brands, communicate with their audience, tell their stories.

Most of all, it worked for the fans. Twitter was a place to follow games, to review performances, to monitor the game's great rolling soap opera. It was a place where you could gather with fellow fans and crow at rivals. It was a place where tribalism could flourish and invective could pour. It could emphasize commonality and difference, all at once. It could be, and often was, deeply toxic, particularly for anyone who did not happen to be a white man.

Twitter always saw itself as the global town square -- a self-definition that Elon Musk has encouraged since his buyout -- but that is a misunderstanding. It was not one large conversation, but millions of small ones. Some people might be debating the machinations of the Deep State, but others were working out whether someone who is 28 is, in fact, 29.

That was true within football, too. Twitter provided a stage on which all of the distinct communities of football fans could find each other. There was a Twitter experienced by tactics nerds and data enthusiasts, a Twitter for those who liked the Bundesliga, another for those who considered themselves scouts. There was Ronaldo Twitter and Messi Twitter, Liverpool Twitter and Manchester United Twitter.

The relationship, after a while, became reciprocal. The most direct impact of that is, perhaps, all of those people now working within football-- as data analysts and scouts and coaches and journalists -- who first used Twitter to spread their ideas, to amplify their work, to find their audience.

But Twitter, and the need to appeal to it, also changed how the game is discussed. The partisan squabbling of Jamie Carragher and Neville; the zany antics of CBS Sports' Champions League pundits; the willingness to engage with data in the course of analysis; the stylized, dramatic videos with which clubs announce new signings -- all of them can trace their roots back to the feed.

Some of those changes have, of course, been more welcome than others, but few have been actively harmful. The risk, though, is that football's relationship with Twitter is now so embedded, its addiction so deep, that it is particularly vulnerable to the platform's sudden -- and apparently deliberate -- volatility.

It is not just that the platform now makes it impossible for cogent new voices to build a following, shutting down its function as a pathway for talent, but that its algorithm has been honed to prioritize the extreme, the willfully controversial and, often, the downright unpleasant.

Over the last week or so, my For You feed -- the one determined by algorithm, rather than chronology -- has offered installments on a particularly stupid debate about whether Erling Haaland is better than Luis Suárez; various posts with inflammatory captions contrasting Bukayo Saka's trophy haul with that of Phil Foden; and an endless supply of memes about Cristiano Ronaldo. (Also, as for everyone else, every single thought that Musk has.)

The risk is, of course, that football does not drift away from the platform as it becomes less and less rewarding, but follows its established pattern: that what the algorithm recommends now is a glimpse of how football will be presented, and consumed, in the future.

Football cannot easily remove itself from this ecosystem. The app -- whatever we call it now -- remains the easiest place to track the game's ever-rotating news cycle. But as the conversation becomes more fractured, more caustic and more confrontational, it feels less like the experience is being shaped by us and more like it is being defined for us. Twitter has already changed the way football is consumed beyond recognition. The worry is that it is just getting started.

Self-Disruption

Increasingly, it feels a little like Arsenal has happened on a glitch in the matrix: one which involves Chelsea spending colossal amounts of money on football players and then, after it has grown bored of them, just sort of giving them to Arsenal, either for a cut-price fee (Jorginho) or for nothing at all (Raheem Sterling).

It is, of course, a marvelous arrangement for Arsenal, which has now developed the happy habit of taking a team full of Chelsea castoffs that duly finishes some distance above Chelsea. But it does not reflect especially well on the team that now frequently feels a bit like its mark.

Two years into its bold attempt to disrupt the transfer market, Chelsea shows no sign of slowing down; this summer, once again, swept a great flotilla of players into Stamford Bridge, each one wearing a bright smile and clutching a seven-year contract.

Chelsea's ownership is adamant this is a good thing: all this talent, all this promise, tied down for a cumulative 191 years, acts as proof that they have spotted something the rest of footballdoes not have the imagination to see.

In time, of course, it is possible Chelsea's thinking will be proved right. For now, though, it is only possible to judge the merits of the plan by what the club is currently doing, not what it says it might do one day. Chelsea spent the last week of the transfer window desperately trying to offload its surplus players to anyone who would have them. It is paying Sterling to play for a rival. That is the best gauge of how this is going.

It's Been a Vibe

All any player can ask for, really, when it comes to retirement is being able to call time on their career on their terms, and so it is for Alex Morgan: After winning two World Cups, an Olympic gold medal, a slew of national and international titles, and representing her country a vaguely ludicrous 224 times, the 35-year-old Morgan -- accomplished, at peace and (surprise!) pregnant -- announced Thursday she was calling it quits after one final match this weekend.

Like all players, as she has grown older, Morgan has possibly become a little underappreciated, presented most recently as a question that Emma Hayes, the new US national team coach, had to answer. A genuine star of remarkable longevity, a forward of rare talent, Morgan more than most deserved the dignity of determining the solution for herself.

Bad Faith

The Premier League has had a rough couple of weeks. First, it learned it did not have jurisdiction to punish Leicester City for breaching financial rules before its relegation in 2022: Being relegated meant that Leicester was, technically, no longer a Premier League team, and resided instead in football's equivalent of international waters.

Then, a few days later, the league approved Chelsea's sale of two hotels adjacent to its stadium to one of its sister companies. The deals had been assessed for "fair market value" and passed. As much as the league must know that this is a very obviously bad look, it had no legal recourse to challenge it.

The temptation here, of course, is both to rail against the pusillanimity of the league and to smirk at the sight of the world's most self-regarding sports competition being hoist by its own petard: The Premier League grew fat on its laissez-faire economics and its disregarded moral compass, and this is the consequence. In that framing, it deserves no sympathy.

But there is another reading. The Premier League cannot be reasonably expected to police its members and enforce its rules -- to function at all, in fact -- if those members are not at least trying to abide by those rules, rather than spending all of their time seeking loopholes and workarounds.

There is no reason for any Premier League team, given the league's financial power, to spend beyond its means. Doing so is not ambition; it is mismanagement. There is no reason Chelsea should have to sell hotels to itself to comply with the league's generous financial rules. That doing so is within the letter of the law should not excuse so flagrantly breaking the spirit of it.

So, yes, the Premier League has had a rough couple of weeks. But the blame for that lies with the clubs who do not seem to want to accept that the integrity of a sporting competition rests on everyone playing by the same rules, rather than trying to bend them into a shape that works for them alone.