Manchester United bans players from using social media

While Coca-Cola has issued guidelines for staff on how they should represent themselves and their company online, Manchester United has taken the Orwellian approach of removing its players from social media sites altogether.

In a post on its website on Friday, the club announced that none of its players maintain personal profiles on social networking sites.

“The club wishes to make it clear that no Manchester United players maintain personal profiles on social networking websites,” said the note posted on ManUtd.com. “Fans encountering any web pages purporting to be written by United players should treat them with extreme scepticism. Any official news relating to Manchester United or its players will be communicated via ManUtd.com.”

Investigations by leading football blog EPL Talk reveal that the club appears to have shut down the social media accounts of many of its star players.

EPL Talk has established that Twitter accounts for Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs and Darren Fletcher have gone, along with the Facebook account of Wes Brown and the Facebook wall content of Ryan Giggs and Rio Ferdinand.

Last night Manchester United also tried to close down former star player Carlos Tevez ‘s offline activities but were unable to do so as the Argentine scored both goals in a 2-1 defeat to arch rivals Manchester City.