Football in the social media era. Mad, isn’t it?
Clips galore, analysis of games and individual performances from every possible angle, more statistics than you can shake a stick at, memes, inter-club banter, AI slop for those who need or desire it, and of course, transfer rumours. Endless, unceasing transfer rumours.
It’s great if you love the thrill of being linked with players X, Y and Z, yet it’s not so great if your club captain and iconic figurehead suddenly finds himself at the heart of a story
that grew, changed shape, panicked vast swathes of a fanbase and was seemingly shot down a matter of days ago.
The “will he or won’t he?” element of the Granit Xhaka to Chelsea story threw up a gaggle of questions — perhaps most pertinently “Who and what do you trust?” Do the holders of blue ticks and their associates really hold the sway we’d like to believe, or is more cynicism and less willingness to consume this endless stream of gossip the way to go?
We can’t really have it both ways, it seems to me.
Those same heavyweight accounts — during the past year, at least — have often been the bearers of exceptional news as far as Sunderland was concerned. We retweeted them with gusto when that happened yet recently, those same accounts have drawn our ire on the basis that they’re part of a grand circle of conspirators, club insiders, morally-questionable agents and the like.
Is that just the law of this particular jungle?
Whatever it is, it’s a stark reminder that the off-field elements of the game we love have now morphed into something ugly. The product is shinier and the exposure is colossal, but that comes at a cost, with the lines between truth and fiction becoming increasingly blurred. Sadly, the genie is very much out of the bottle and there’s no going back…more’s the pity.
Football in the years before Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and the like wasn’t perfect, but it was purer, somehow more organic and crucially, far more connected to those that made it great.
More often than not, conversations about individual player performances, games, transfers and the like took place in classrooms, playgrounds, around the tables of pubs, cafes and in bus queues, and if you happened to bump into a fellow fan at the supermarket or in the street.
The yellow Sky Sports News ticker was the “Here We Go!” of its day and transfers weren’t played out with fanbases taking petty potshots at each other and declaring that their incoming holding midfielder was better than your incoming holding midfielder because his heat map and his number of pre-assists said so. The summer was once a time for things to shut down and for fans to decompress; nowadays, the cycle never ends, every day brings something new and we all have to try and keep up.
Of course, this saga/story/storm in a teacup (delete as applicable), which was fuelled by a plethora of journalists and media figures, didn’t just concern a rank-and-file member of our squad — it concerned a player for whom the loss to a rival Premier League club would’ve been borderline calamitous.
Reality break: Xhaka has been one of the most influential footballers to don a Sunderland shirt in the past fifty years.
No protracted move to Chelsea and no rekindling of his working relationship with Xabi Alonso would’ve altered that in terms of what he accomplished on the pitch, but had we not been able to breathe a sigh of relief as a possible switch to Stamford Bridge was allegedly kiboshed, there was surely the potential for his legacy in red and white to be viewed very differently, if not damaged.
Thankfully, we’re told that it’s over, that Xhaka will be a Sunderland player for 2026/2027 and that Chelsea have essentially been told to look elsewhere for the kind of experienced, wily midfielder they’re seeking as they attempt to recover after a disastrous season.
So, what did we learn?
Mainly that Blues’ supporters — perhaps still fuelled by the old Abramovich-era arrogance and grossly dismissive of Sunderland as a merely a small-time provincial outfit in the far north — seem incapable of grasping that age and transfer value are not one and the same, and that it seems that this version of Sunderland AFC can’t be intimidated or lowballed into selling a key player.
The news that Xhaka’s commitment to the red and white cause seemingly remains intact came as a huge relief — let’s hope it holds true during the remainder of the summer and when the new season kicks off.
Keeping the show on the road with European football on the horizon and senior pros at the heart of the dressing room is vital, and Xhaka’s importance to that can’t be downplayed. The speech he gave following the final-day victory over Chelsea was utterly inspirational and had every supporter feeling as though anything and everything was possible. For the good of our 2026/2027 prospects, I sincerely hope that it proves to be as meaningful and as heartfelt as it sounded at the time.
As for those that’ve been at the centre of this situation, delivering updates and conflicting information? We’ll doubtless be hanging on their every word if and when they deliver positive updates regarding potential Sunderland signings.
It’s the old paradox: we often can’t live with them, but in the digital age, it’s occasionally difficult to try and live without them.
