Antisocial media: Manchester United players Jesse Lingard and Marcus Rashford would benefit from avoiding online idiots

If he knew about it, Jesse Lingard was well intentioned when he paid a memorial tribute to victims of the Manchester Arena attack last week. Unfortunately, adding a personalised ‘JLingz’ logo used by his fashion brand looked crass and the post was deleted after much online abuse. Footballers – or rather the people who manage their social media accounts – do not always help themselves and nor is it the first time.

In 2018, a misspelt, mistimed tweet was posted from Lingard’s account about playing a Fifa game with Marcus Rashford. It unfortunately coincided with the 60th anniversary memorial for the Munich air disaster – when Lingard was at said memorial. He later apologised, blaming “a member of my media team”. Modern football, eh?

On another Munich ‘tribute’ two years earlier, teammate Phil Jones also put promotional branding and his various social media accounts – accounts he now barely uses. He hasn’t tweeted since 2017. Can you blame him? He receives so much abuse that nothing good could come from him reading it. Much of it comes from people who describe themselves as United fans.

Jones’ derided defensive sidekick, Chris Smalling, also receives a torrent of bile. They’re honest professional footballers who have been good enough to play hundreds of games in trophy-winning teams. They would have settled for that when they were starting out as footballers, yet they’re made to feel like failures.

Smalling rarely tweets, neither does Luke Shaw. The last tweet many of them put out was a prophetic “Enough” post against the virulent online racist abuse on April 19. He and other players want the social media platforms to do more. Those players should do even less online if they value their mental health.