With football clubs now auxiliary content producers, they have the finances and power to essentially break their own news.
Manchester United have been best at latching onto this content creation, treating the return of Paul Pogba as an eliding of human resources and grime music, all shot in 1080p.
United clearly had their shit together for the announcement, and their cross-city rivals could learn a thing or two from Ed Woodward's Dream Machine.
Manchester City have today confirmed the signing of John Stones from Everton, but by the time they had announced it, pretty much everybody knew that it was happening. The news was in fact broken by those fearless sleuths at UEFA, as Stones was included in City's Champions League squad published by UEFA this morning, despite the fact he was still an Everton player.
UEFA were unsurprisingly contacted over the matter. This is via ESPN FC:
UEFA received all UEFA Champions League playoff squad lists ahead of the midnight CET deadline on Aug 8.
As is standard procedure, the lists were automatically published on UEFA.com once they were approved and entered into the UEFA competition database.
He (Stones) was in the squad list we received from Manchester City. The deadline was yesterday and the player was in the squad.
He has been registered to play [for City]. We are double-checking now as we have had a lot calls about this.
City then realised that they had better tell someone they had signed Stones, so they made the official announcement a couple of hours later, with this mystical reveal in the City dressing room, a really weird vine and the boring old #WelcomeJohn:
Meanwhile in the City dressing room... pic.twitter.com/EyTMJdbEkH
— Manchester City (@ManCity) August 9, 2016
BOOM! There you go... #WelcomeJohn https://t.co/AqprSEpkvk
— Manchester City (@ManCity) August 9, 2016
The whole business is apparently an embarrassment to City, as Sky Sports News tweeted. (Notice the use of a City source rather than 'Sky Sources', perhaps they actually did their own work on this one):
.@ManCity Source: Stones inclusion in @ChampionsLeague squad is "huge embarrassment" for the club. #SSNHQ
— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) August 9, 2016
We should mention that City have paid £47.5 million for Stones, and he has signed a six-year contract. Everton have replaced him with Ashley Williams.
