“A footballer with a personality and a fan with an opinion”.
Demetri Mitchell’s Twitter bio speaks volumes about his outlook on life, but the Exeter City star is one of the few professional footballers actively trying to embrace social media rather than shy away from it.
In an era riddled with robotic soundbites and players subletting their social media accounts to PR brands, Mitchell is going against the grain. Driven by a lifetime of conjuring up the perfect answers in media interviews, the Manchester United academy graduate has a new goal: changing the way footballers interact with people online.
“I said to my friends and family kind of light-heartedly that I was going to change how people view footballers and how players interact with people,” Mitchell tells Mirror Football.”That was the meaning for me to voice my opinion on social media, not to just gain some followers. I strongly believe that fans will appreciate it more and even the media, being more like a regular person and less like robots. There’s positives that can come out of social media – it doesn’t have to be all negative and arguments.
“I feel like players, and even managers, always have the politically correct answer. I’ve been doing that myself for years; always thinking of the right thing to say or the correct thing to post. But then I don’t feel like I’m being my genuine self. So I thought to myself, ‘I’m 26 now, I’m playing at Exeter and I’m a journeyman footballer’, so I’ve just been speaking more freely about how I view the game and how I feel.”
Mitchell’s timeline is a refreshing shift from the posts you would perhaps see belonging to players in the Premier League. Debates around players, light-hearted banter and puzzling real-life polls now populate the versatile midfielder’s profile.
It feels as though Mitchell is letting his words go as a boxer would their hands inside the ring. He stands out for all the right reasons, for being unapologetically authentic in an industry full of criticism for players who try to paint the perfect picture in 280 characters or less.
Fittingly, not only does Mitchell already feel better for speaking off the cuff, his approach has yielded plenty of positive messages and support from his peers, as well as the inevitable negativity that goes hand in hand with sharing online.
“The amount of people that have reached out to speak about it [has been huge]. The response I’ve had from fans too has kind of reiterated to me that I’m not doing a bad thing here. The reaction from the manager and the players [at Exeter] has been hugely positive as well. People outside of football have said what I’ve been doing is refreshing.
“Listen, I watch Premier League football, I watch the Champions League…I understand that I’m probably not going to get to that level now. But I’m still a fan of football and I still watch it.
“I don’t think it’s bad for me to say I prefer Neymar over [Kylian] Mbappe; that’s just me speaking from a fan’s point of view. I’m not saying that Mbappe is crap, just that I prefer Neymar. People will come back and say ‘You’re nowhere near that level’, and I’m not saying I am, but at the end of the day I’m still a football fan
“When I first started doing it there were loads of comments telling me to stay off Twitter and get back to football – can I not be on Twitter? I like boxing and I see guys like Conor Benn, Terence Crawford and Tyson Fury tweeting whatever they want; if they can, why can’t I?
