Over the course of last weekend, an X account with 1.5 million followers that purports to offer “unrivalled football coverage” and is blue-tick verified (and thus able to monetise their posts) posted five times about Marseille striker Mason Greenwood.
“How much longer can Thomas Tuchel ignore Mason Greenwood?” read one, with the statement written all in capitals – it got 3.3 million views. Other lines: “Thomas Tuchel, are you watching?!”, “Arguably the most in-form English player there is (plus 12 exclamation marks)”. They then posted a survey about Greenwood being in the England squad.
When Marseille manager Roberto De Zerbi described Greenwood as worthy of the Ballon D’Or – hyperbolic before you consider everything else – football journalist Fabrizio Romano mocked up a photo of Greenwood receiving the award from De Zerbi on Instagram to his 41.5 million followers. His post was tagged as from “Marseille, France”.
Another X account, this time with only tens of thousands of followers (also blue-tick verified), falsely attributed a quote to England manager Thomas Tuchel: “I would rather lose without him than win with him.” That post was seen 3.4 million views.
This is merely a sample. This Greenwood stanning has created its own corner of football social media and recently that corner has become increasingly noisy. Over recent weeks, I’ve noticed a significant increase in pro-Greenwood posts on X alone.
s about him typically generate high engagement, particularly those who champion the player for a place in England’s World Cup squad. They are thus a goldmine for those who wish to monetise through engagement. Perhaps they are all simply big Ligue 1 supporters with no idea of the context. Perhaps.
For those who need to be reminded, Greenwood has not been picked for any England squad since being suspended by Manchester United in January 2022 following the player’s arrest after images and videos were posted on social media reporting sexual and physical violence. In February 2023, the Crown Prosecution Service discontinued the charges after “the withdrawal of key witnesses and new material that came to light”. Greenwood denied all charges.
A Nigerian Youtuber, whose bio lists him as a Fifa accredited photo journalist, with almost a million followers on X posted: “I love how Marseille is promoting Greenwood” with a fire emoji. One of the top replies discusses how “failure has made him even better”, as if this is an issue purely of missed chances or hamstring injuries.
Social media is a wild west of opinion and there are those who believe that Greenwood deserves another chance with England. That is bleakly dispiriting. The Oxford Dictionary word of the year is “rage bait”, content deliberately designed, posted or phrased to provoke anger, and that is another theory. Do those running these accounts believe in Greenwood’s cause or are they simply producing content designed to provocate?
What the “second chance” implorers fail to appreciate – deliberately or otherwise – is that playing for Marseille, with a manager who is seemingly happy to praise the football to the hilt in public (which I also find grim) is the second chance. Being picked for your country is a privilege, not a right based entirely upon on-pitch form. Tuchel said in September that Greenwood was not under consideration for selection. Good on him for that.
Much of this strikes as a playground of aggressive toxic masculinity, reflected in the below-the-line arguments of those who insist that it is Greenwood who is being made a victim through his omission from England’s squads. That is highly depressing given the images and videos allegedly containing Greenwood we saw.
After an internal investigation using material not in the public domain and speaking to people involved in the case, Manchester United said they were “satisfied that Mason did not commit the acts he was charged with” but “Mason accepted that he had made mistakes”.
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It’s one thing to call for his inclusion without detailing the history that may form the backbone of the argument against it. Single posts and replies are distasteful, distraction through omission of the key details for why Greenwood left England for Getafe and Marseille in the first place.
But a concerted campaign over time? That is morally abhorrent and I believe it deserves great censure. Social media is not compulsory; your posts are a choice and, if you have a million followers or more, it comes with responsibility because of the broad range of your audience.
Trumpeting the international hopes of this player is a flagrant breach of that moral code. You should know what you’re doing and you should know what impact it may have on people. You cannot say “hey, this is just a football thing” when the complexities of this situation demand better. There is a duty of care that extends beyond one bloke, an England squad and your engagement metrics on social media.
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