Any media outlet has to sex things up on occasion, it would be very difficult to find one in sport that doesn't. A headline can be a little misleading and designed to catch attention or something can be slightly exaggerated to suit the line of a story. Nobody gets harmed and the world keeps turning, there's no malice involved usually but occasionally there's something which is so unfair to a player it can damage their reputation and even harm their career prospects.
What the Daily Mail have done today with Manchester United's Bebe is a prime example of that. Quotes were flying around Twitter earlier from an interview the Rio Ave loan player had done in Portugal, it was alarmist and not a fair representation of what he'd said, but then that's what Twitter is. It should be expected that whilst we take everything on there with a pinch of salt, that if an English newspaper carries the interview then they will have checked it.
You'd expect one of England's top newspapers to at least read the interview first before taking quotes from Twitter and probably get a professional translation of it. Really, you'd expect them not to take quotes from Twitter at all, because it's so easy to end up with the wrong end of a very long stick.
Bebe's interview with Mais in Portugal today was spread out over five articles, it's a weighty piece. He's very complimentary about Manchester United throughout and says all the things you'd expect him to say about life at Old Trafford. He thinks he could have done better, everyone was nice to him, he was star struck and - the staple for any overseas Manchester United player - he couldn't understand Sir Alex Ferguson's accent and thinks Paul Scholes is a class apart.
It was picked up by Portuguese journalist Joao Ruela who tweeted rough quotes from the piece in English, it wasn't meant for publication and it wasn't from his newspaper Diario de Noticias. If he'd have known how some people would take it the wrong way, he probably wouldn't have bothered. His tone was lost and a few paraphrased snippets have been turned into Bebe 'digging his own grave'.
A Daily Mail journalist saw Joao's tweets and replied 'can you follow me so i can message you, joao? trying to call you but can't find you. obrigado' and 'thanks. have found the interview now so it's ok. really enjoyed the piece.'
Of course the piece wasn't from Joao or even his newspaper, but then that doesn't matter, the Daily Mail had found the interview source and so would now go through it and get it translated and make a decent story from it, right?
Well, here's much of what the Daily Mail said including all their quotes:
'I couldn't understand Fergie! Misfit Bebe digs his own grave, adding he couldn't take life at United seriously
Bebe said in an interview with maisfutebol.iol.pt: 'I never took Manchester United seriously and never understood a word about what Alex Ferguson was saying.
'He (Fergie) asked me to cut my hair. I did it, but in the next day I've passed around him many times and he didn't recognize me.
'Fergie is always complaining with Nani. Maybe because he always expected him to be the new Cristiano Ronaldo.'
And he added: 'One day I've passed the ball through Ryan Giggs' legs. And he told me: "Go on, go tell your mother you did this to Ryan Giggs".'
Remember, they didn't need Joao Ruela anymore because they had found the original article, yet the quotes in green (yes, that's all of them) are word for word the tweets that Joao put out. The only difference is that the Daily Mail have changed 'Alex Ferguson' to 'Fergie' just to make things sounds that little bit more disrespectful. In reality, Joao was only paraphrasing tiny bits of a lengthy article and Bebe referred to the Manchester United manager as Mr Ferguson.
Indeed, Bebe was complimentary about Manchester United and Ferguson throughout the interview. He praised players, staff and fans of the club, going as far as to say the Old Trafford crowd is better than those he saw in Turkey, which is some compliment. The story about Giggs was said whilst laughing and wasn't a dig, and the bit about Nani was preceded by an explanation that 'Mr Ferguson' isn't intimidating and will only criticise a player if he feels he can help them achieve more.
If the Daily Mail had asked Joao about his snippets, he'd have explained to them the context behind them. We did, and he told us it was all being taken out of context. To be clear, his exact words were "In Portugal, everybody is laughing because of the interview, it has many funny episodes, but in England they are turning it into a scandal."
But the Daily Mail wouldn't know that, because they were happy to run with their wrong end of the stick, pretend they didn't need Joao's help anymore and then take his quotes word for word without realising it was paraphrased and they'd missed the tone.
Bebe is now the subject of abuse from many fans all over Twitter, who feel he's disrespected their football club, when he's done quite the opposite. It's a shame because, as Joao also told us, Bebe has been a revelation at Rio Ave and this stuff won't help him.
