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Ah, Twitter. What would football fans do without the social media site when they look for banter at its finest? A lot can happen over 140 characters and more often than not it involves people taking out their frustration on clubs, players and even football managers.
But therein lies the problem. Most casual users on Twitter don’t tag the right people and end up tweeting the wrong person – a simple case of mistake identity because they share the same name, nickname or initials.
We list a few people who always end up being targeted as a result.
1) @chelsea
Poor Chelsea. No, not the club. This designer from New York who has the handle @chelsea on Twitter. She probably gets a lot of hate tweets from fans who despise the club and then a few more from Chelsea fans when the team performs poorly.
For those wondering, the club’s official account is @chelseafc. Of course, many users still send tweets to @chelsea regardless.
2) @rvp
Dutch striker Robin van Persie has nothing on Mr. Ravi Visvesvara Prasad – a consultant in various fields from software to the telecom industry. Mr. Prasad rose to fame when Van Persie made the move from Arsenal to arch-rivals Manchester United in the summer of 2012. The move obviously did not sit too well with the Arsenal fans and they took to Twitter to have a word with their former captain.
The only problem was they didn’t know his official Twitter ID was @Persie_Official and not @rvp. As he himself claims, he has been known as RVP since the 1980s – when Van Persie was still just a toddler.
Of course, after the initial furore and confusion over the mistaken identity died down, Mr Prasad soon became a Twitter sensation and even trolled Van Persie himself. Now that’s what we call making a bad situation work to your advantage.
3) @adamjohnson
Sometimes it’s bad enough when you share the same name as a footballer and get abuse coming your way when he performs badly and Twitter users aren’t bothered to find out the player’s actual profile. It’s another thing when said player is arrested and sentenced to prison for sex offences involving an underage, 15-year-old girl!
That’s exactly what Twitter user Adam Keith Johnson found out when former England player Adam Johnson was found guilty of grooming a young teenage girl.
The poor guy received a ton of abuse on Twitter and he had to clarify that he was in no way associated with the former Sunderland player.
He wasn’t the only Adam Johnson on Twitter to get abused, though. As you can imagine, it’s not exactly an uncommon name.
4) @JoeHart
England almost never do well at international tournaments and Euro 2016 was no exception. While the Three Lions went through to the knockout stages, they were upset by a resolute Iceland – a relative newcomer in international football and playing in their first ever major tournament.
Goalkeeper Joe Hart was criticised for not saving the second goal that gave Iceland the win and fans targeted the Manchester City shot-stopper for the loss.
Unfortunately, Joe Hart is not on Twitter and it was a comedian from London by the same name who received all the abuse directed at the keeper. While he was mildly irritated by a few tweets that crossed the line, he did manage to keep his sense of humour while clarifying who he really was.
5) @woy
Yet another victim of England’s premature exit from Euro 2016 was Mike Woycheck. An Operations Director in Pittsburgh, USA, the tech expert was at the receiving end of abuse from England fans who mistook him for Roy Hodgson.
Of course, some of them deliberately targeted him using Hodgson’s nickname ‘Woy’ as he is more popularly known as. The Three Lions boss stepped down immediately after his side were knocked out by Iceland but that did not stop fans from telling ‘Woy’ what they thought of him during the tournament.
6) @avb
Remember when Andre Villas-Boas was the manager of Tottenham Hotspur and the London side were struggling to get results? Well, the Portuguese manager was a target for Twitter users and, unfortunately, it was someone else who received all the abuse – Ashley Van Buren.
She works in New York and has worked in theatre, Hollywood and also written books. But she does nothing related to football (or soccer as it is known in the US).
Fans completely lost it when Spurs lost 5-0 to Liverpool and they wanted AVB out of the club as soon as possible. While they didn’t bother to check if @avb was indeed the football manager, Ashley had a good time replying to them and earned a number of followers as a result of her witty responses.
