In what I refer to as life’s twisted irony, a soccer player’s old tweets came back to haunt him when Spanish champions Barcelona hired and fired him on the same day.
Spanish national daily sport newspaper Marca reports that Sergi Guardiola, 24, made the dream move Monday from AD Alcorcon to the Catalan club’s B side which is renowned for cultivating future international stars .
But tweets posted from his account during the 2013 El Clásico clash between Barcelona and arch rivals Real Madrid were soon dug up.
They included insults to his new team, its star player Lionel Messi and the Catalonia region of northeastern Spain as a whole. The tweets read:
“I wouldn’t have Messi in my team; he spoils the way the team plays,” one of the messages attributed to Guardiola states. “Up Real Madrid, and the hell with Catalonia.”
A Barcelona statement said:
“FC Barcelona has decided to terminate the contract signed with Sergi Guardiola, after finding that he had published offensive tweets about the club and Catalonia,”
Guardiola, later claimed a friend had posted the tweets as a joke.
“I want to make clear I didn’t write those tweets. A friend took my phone and did it. It’s a misunderstanding,” he told the Spanish radio station Cope. “The tweets are from 2013, a joke from a friend, I didn’t even know the tweets existed.”
“Now I’m going home, we’ll see what happens,” he added.