A regular and routine tweet was met by hostility and derision on Thursday, as Uefa’s Europa League Twitter account quickly had to backtrack on their usual “Happy Thursday” post.
With matches from European football’s second-tier competition routinely taking place on this day of the week, it has become the norm for the @EuropaLeague account to tweet out “Happy Thursday everyone!” accompanied by a celebratory emoji or two - but with the presumably-scheduled tweet going out this week, followers responded in unhappy fashion and accused Uefa of failing to “read the room”.
That comes in the wake of Russia declaring war on Ukraine and reports of explosions in the capital, Kyiv, and beyond.
The account quickly deleted the post, but subsequent tweets were responded to in the same manner amid an outcry for sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s country.
Several football supporters called for the punishments to include the removal of Russian side Zenit from the Europa League competition, with the St. Petersburg outfit set to play in Spain against Real Betis in the second leg of their tie on Thursday night.
Plenty were quick to jump on board with sarcastic, furious or aggressive replies, from those accusing Uefa of being “in too deep” with Russian funds and oligarchs, to those who see the humour in adapting memes to the moment.
While there is no indication that Thursday’s games, including Zenit’s will not go ahead at this point, the Champions League final is another matter.
Already there have been demands to strip hosts St. Petersburg of the occasion, with Uefa reportedly drawing up plans to hold the match elsewhere.
Uefa’s @ChampionsLeague account has also been hit by many of the same type of comments, including calls to remove Gazprom, the Russian state-owned energy provider, as a main sponsor of the competition.
