There used to be two distinctive ‘silly seasons’ when it came to football rumour-mongering but the relatively recent rise of click-hungry online sources has seen the bullshit-alanche become an almost entirely uninterrupted, year-long onslaught.
To that end, Spanish tabloid SPORT picked a name and a club out of the hat and went big with their claims today that Borussia Dortmund midfielder Ilkay Gundogan has agreed a deal to become Pep Guardiola’s first signing at Man City…
Gundogan le comunica al Barcelona que se va al City. Los detalles: https://t.co/CNpcJaYsiH #fcblive pic.twitter.com/dzCBu9wTzZ
— Diario SPORT (@sport) February 19, 2016
You know it’s dross. They know it’s dross. But still…
Satisfyingly however, Dortmund’s official Twitter account caught wind of SPORT’s hot story and swiftly responded by expertly carving it up with all the unflappable calm and effortless precision of a veteran vivisectionist…
.@sport Really? We should know about that, shouldn’t we? Truth is, we don’t know anything about that.
— Borussia Dortmund (@BVB) February 19, 2016
Ouch. Guess we can go ahead and file this one under ‘complete and unashamed hogwash’ then?