The ‘Announce’ Phenomenon and What It Says About The State of Modern Football

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports UK.

Trawl through Arsenal's Twitter mentions over the past week or so and you will see innumerable tweets saying either "ANNOUNCE LUCAS" or "ANNOUNCE MUSTAFI". Were you unacquainted with online football culture, you might find this phenomenon inexplicably weird. Why would people bombard a Twitter account with demands for premature transfer announcements, as if a club's social media manager had the power to bring them forward? Is this not an entirely futile exercise?

The answer, as with everything, is both 'yes' and 'no'.

It can be assumed that, at some point, the 'announce' phenomenon was deadly serious. Someone, somewhere, became so frustrated with their side's inability to finalise a signing that they totally lost it, and started to bombard the club's verified account with extremely angsty tweets. That was the beginning of a widespread trend, which saw football clubs' accounts drowned out by the clamour for fresh signings. "ANNOUNCE A TRANSFER" the people cried, their voices reaching a deafening crescendo in the ears of a bemused audience development team.

Can't wait to see what the @arsenal admins have in store for the announcement! Every reply has been "Announce Mustafi" for the last month.
— The Arsenal (@DareToWenger) August 26, 2016

Reading into this phenomenon, one might say it was indicative of the state of modern football. Social media has made fans feel that football is an interactive experience while, in reality, they have no more access to or influence over clubs than they did in the era of print media and the newspaper press. Testament to the illusion of interactivity comes after every defeat, when clubs' social media accounts are flooded with rage and abuse. This is met with a wall of silence, and goes forever unanswered. Nobody is listening to the cacophony of online anger – or at least nobody able to address its cause.

To go even further, the 'announce' phenomenon might be interpreted as an indication of football's decreased attention span. Before the inexorable ascent of Twitter and Facebook, supporters had to wait for the morning's papers for transfer news, or at least rely on compelling conjecture from that mate who claimed to know David Dein. Now, with transfer rumours more accessible than ever, the waiting game becomes unbearable. Fans feel that deals are going impossibly slowly, when they are in fact progressing at a perfectly normal speed.

So, as with everything in the world, the age of rolling news and instant information has demolished the virtues of calm and patience. Fans demand that clubs announce new signings, despite the fact that their demands are as ludicrous as they are futile. That would be the most depressing interpretation of the 'announce' phenomenon, and a sad indictment of modern football fans. Thankfully, the truth is a little less serious, and considerably more surreal.

While there are doubtlessly a fair few supporters who have limited patience when it comes to transfers, the 'announce' phenomenon has become self-referential in its silliness. Much like people sending 'shat on' tweets to Gary Lineker, or 'ORNOGRAPHY' tweets to David Ornstein, it is now part of football meta-culture, and the brilliant caprice of the online fan. The majority of fans sending 'ANNOUNCE THE TRANSFER' tweets are less interested in transfers than they are in taking the piss, both out of their football club's social media presence and the sort of person who seriously tweets 'ANNOUNCE THE TRANSFER'. This is fandom at its most ridiculous, and the internet at its most self-aware.

When social media tries to get in on the action, the self-reference inevitably becomes cringeworthy. The 'announce' phenomenon cannot be turned on football fans, because they will always find a way to wrest it back. Take this tweet from Tottenham, for instance, which attempts to incorporate several "ANNOUNCE NKOUDOU" tweets into the actual announcement of Georges-Kevin Nkoudou. It has simply been met with more "ANNOUNCE NKOUDOU" tweets, because that is the sort of thing football fans do.

Once upon a time… pic.twitter.com/zmO5acV797
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) August 31, 2016

@spursofficial You gunna announce Nkoudou then?
— Alex Hook (@alex_mufc) August 31, 2016

This is exactly why Gary Lineker will never be able to reclaim the 'shat on' jokes, and why David Ornstein will never be able to rid his mentions of memes. This is why, despite our shortened attention spans, there is still hope for football in an online world. When all else fails, when football is just an assortment of GIFs, we will still find a way to subvert the process. They may try to take away the beautiful game and turn it into a vehicle for retweets and content but, no matter how concerted their efforts, football fans' perverse sense of humour will prevail.