Garnacho’s fall into the social media cesspit is proof of players’ warped sense of entitlement
Social media has become a toxic cesspit that often enables the worst of society to surface. it is pretty much uncontrolled and allows anonymity, enabling cowards and breeding hate, discontent and divisiveness.
Those who run social media know that conflict and division generate traffic, none of which is for the good of society. it drags people into unwelcome spaces, enables delusion and people of a very strange thought process to connect with one another in a way that creates an echo chamber and gives people voices that perhaps they shouldn’t have.
i’m not suggesting freedom of speech is something we should remove but, social media, on balance, does more harm than good. Unfortunately, it’s a reality, an everyday tool and part of life now. it does of course have merits but society would likely be a better place without social media.
But this is the world we live in. We take the benefits of pressing a button to order whatever we want instantaneously. We take the benefits of being able to voice our dissatisfaction and call businesses out without having to go through the painful process of being told, ‘We really care about your call’, while being put on hold for 45 minutes via an automated answering service.
Social media does have positive aspects. it helps raise awareness of injustices and charities but the inability to police it and the darkness of the world, tragically, means it can subvert everything. So while there are positives, it’s often used as a divisive, abusive tool.
and this brings us to football and the game’s relationship with social media. Manchester United’s 19- year- old winger alejandro Garnacho landed himself in trouble for ‘ liking’ a post that was critical of his treatment by Erik ten Hag. The United manager’s crime? Substituting Garnacho at half-time at Bournemouth.
Such issues and headaches for managers never used to exist. But it shouldn’t be complicated to deal with. The central values of a football club should be well established and the fact Garnacho chose to ignore them might explain some of the challenges United face over their culture.
clubs place clear obligations on players to behave in a certain way. Social media rules in a contract should be very clear — you’re not allowed to criticise the club or their senior personnel.
The fact players think they can — and Garnacho is not the first and won’t be the last — is the conundrum football faces in balancing power between players, managers and owners. if there was a stand-off between Ten Hag and Garnacho, who’s going to win in the eyes of the outside world?
Well, Garnacho’s a young star on a long contract, worth a few quid, and Ten Hag is a manager whose position is under threat. i know who should win, regardless of the manager’s future, and it should really be the club taking a stance, not the manager.
There is simply no need for an influential, recognisable footballer like Garnacho giving validity to a social media post from some random person making an observation that is uninformed and based solely on their opinion. if i was still involved in football i’d be very clear: if you have a criticism of the club or want an audience because you are unhappy with something then deal with it internally.
clubs are not run by Mao Zedong- type figures. People can be spoken to in a respectful fashion and once grievances have been aired you get on with it.
indexing yourself to anything that is critical of the football club who pay your wages will be considered a breach of your contract and be dealt with accordingly.
But football has allowed the protagonists to have an elevated sense of entitlement. Hence why we possibly see managers under contractual obligations such as Russell Martin being sued because he thought he could sashay out of Swansea and go to Southampton without consequences.
it’s why i dragged iain Dowie to the High court in 2007 and why Sir alex Ferguson had his backside smacked by JP McManus and John Magnier over a horse.
Football people live in a bubble and when they come into contact with the real world they struggle to compute that they’re not as important as they might have led themselves to believe.
Step outside the bubble and into the real world and most of the time you have to obey the same societal and commercial obligations that we all do.
WHEN you’re playing for Manchester United, you’re playing for one of the best clubs in the world. it’s a bit like the JFK mantra. Don’t ask what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. The players seem to have got it the wrong way round. We saw it on Monday night with the ridiculousness of the chelsea players arguing over a penalty.
This is a generation of footballers who, because they are economic islands from a very early age, are independent from reality, responsibility, financial and societal constraints.
in the real world, you need to be able to go to work and have respect for the environment you’re in, otherwise you will lose your livelihood.
in football, it doesn’t work that way. They get paid huge money at such early ages on fixed-term contracts. it is a culture of too much, too soon. You are always going to have challenges with young players. They are not immune to making silly mistakes and, like most people if given enormous amounts of wealth, recognition and adulation at a very young age, are going to be affected by it.
Everyone around you is in thrall to you and when you see a footballer arrive at an event, it’s akin to a member of the Royal Family arriving with the ridiculous fawning for someone who often can’t put together a sentence let alone complete a game of Wordle. But such is the culture of celebrity.
it’s very difficult for young players because they’re in this world of ridiculous attention and adoration and people mistake wealth for meaning, so players are going to be a little full of themselves. That’s where the culture of the club becomes really prevalent. Senior players should be setting good examples but we’re not seeing that at United.
You’ve got Marcus Rashford going to high-profile nightclubs after United were obliterated by city and soon after missing training after a boozy night out.
You’ve got Bruno Fernandes forever waving aeroplanes down on the pitch because he can’t control his emotions. if the values and central principles of the club were right, you wouldn’t have these issues that appear to be a staple at United.
it’s a bit like this country. We wouldn’t have some of the problems we have in society and with issues such as multi-culturalism if we stopped appeasing people and had some central values.
if our values were more evident, we wouldn’t tolerate having a teacher in Batley who is in hiding because certain religious groups and fanatics don’t like an observation made about a religious figure in a country which doesn’t have blasphemy laws.
Football has been built, in part, on a liberty-taking culture and that then become the norm. it’s only when something awful happens that people step in and say, ‘That’ll do, thank you very much’. By that stage the genie is out of the bottle and you’re dealing with a bigger problem.
if we had more discipline and respect in society, if we had a better outlook and teachers and other professions were treated with respect, then perhaps we’d see more of it in our game.
You might even find a better generation of player, better characters and more leaders and less of the entitled attitude that, while pervasive in society, really reverberates in football.
Listen to White and Jordan every weekday on talkSport from 10am-1pm