These footballers' MySpace & Bebo accounts are peak noughties

The rapid march of social media means there’s really nowhere to hide for the modern footballer.

Whether they're geo-tagged in the exact city of the club they've said they're definitely not signing for, or there's a childhood photo knocking about of them wearing the shirt of a rival team, diligent citizens of the internet will hunt out this information, find it and make it public.

As a result of this over-riding public mood, is it any wonder the modern footballer tries to so hard to carefully cultivate their own social media presence these days.

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts are carefully planned and presented to keep everyone from corporate sponsors, club hierarchy, and fans onside.

But not all players have applied this careful approach to brand management to the accounts they used before they made it big.

We’ve spent some time gathering evidence of the mid-noughties Bebo (RIP) and Myspace profiles of some of the England squad’s great millennial hopes.

For your pleasure…

Dele Alli pioneers the bathroom selfie

Well, if you haven’t seen Dele Alli’s MySpace profile picture yet, then, quite frankly, where have you been?

Apparently this surfaced in a Whatsapp group by team-mate Harry Kane and Alli has since reluctantly confirmed its validity. Kane, meanwhile, obviously has never heard that mantra about people in glass houses...

Harry Kane’s Classic Cruise ‘08

Remember when everyone had a photo album on their MySpace called “insert holiday destination – 08/09”?

Remember when people made photo albums, for that matter? And ones that, looked a bit naff, rather than the perfectly choreographed snapshots into an ideal life that doesn't really exist for real people we see today?

‘Classic – cruise 2008’, from a MySpace account that seems to be owned by Harry Kane (and is full to the brim with fantastic images of his youth) is an absolute classic of the holiday snap genre - from the picture of him and his brother flexing on deck, to the banter moment of them pretending to push over the Leaning Tower of Pisa, straight through to Harry getting ready for the cruise-ship disco.

More posts like this from the England camp in Russia please, Harry.

Jordan Henderson with his 'gawjuz girl'

This alleged Bebo account of Hendo's has been shared widely, with the likes of Empire of The Kop, external and Squawka, external claiming it's been taken from his Bebo profile.

We can't be sure that these immortal words were definitely penned by the hand of our Jordy, but we certainly hope so. Either way, the alleged profile has since disappeared - whether that's because the lad saw sense, because Bebo have deleted a whole raft of their old accounts, or otherwise.

Either way, we know how a lot of this turned out in the end.

He did, indeed, get to play in the first team for ‘the scum game’. He’s still considered in the same company as Messi and Aguero (right?) and he still isn’t scared of anything – as evidenced by that time he squared up to Diego Costa.

There’s also still time for him to bring the FA Cup to Sunderland.

Adam Lallana achieves peak noughties swag

Before filters, before clean eating and smoothies and kale and #thinspiration and #alienyoga…in a naive age, before everyone essentially became their own carefully managed brand, another chief use of social media was to document alcopop-fuelled nights out in nightclubs, captured on smoky digital cameras.

The MySpace page which looks to be owned by Adam Lallana and certainly contains some classic photos of the young man is an absolutely study in this mid-noughties trope. Full of badly-composed photographs of the young man and his squad sporting sweaty fringes, low-cut v-necks, absolutely loads of dog-tag chains and bottled drinks almost as boldly-coloured as their polo shirts...

All sound-tracked, no doubt, to a few bangers from Flo Rida.

Tha-Big-Ac with his ‘brown styled hair’

As with Hendo's Bebo, these alleged gems from Andy Carroll's Bebo have done the rounds too - reported by Metro, external and Yahoo, external as belonging to a young Andy Carroll's Bebo profile. Again, that profile doesn't seem to exist anymore. A great loss to the internet.

If this really is a young Andy, then you've really got to love the humility of 'Tha-Big-Ac' here – calls himself "athletic pretty sporty". Also, what on earth is to be inferred by the phrase, "brown styled hair"?

Also mentions that he likes "havin a drink" and "goin to town". In hindsight, he probably wishes he had knocked that on the head, external.

Sterling work from Raheem

We just can’t even cope with these grainy, blurry photographs of a tiny, 13-year-old Raheem Sterling, from a MySpace account that look like it belongs to him. They seem to have been taken mostly in the hallway of his childhood home in north London.

Captions on that account read like 'mans on da watch out', 'mans ready for anything' and 'me agen'.

Daniel Sturridge has been a dapper Dan since way back

He’s well known to us all as a stylish man, so we shouldn’t be surprised at this evidence from MySpace, that swag is not something Studge has only recently acquired.

The school-prom full white suit is really next-level stuff.

A bathroom selfie to rival even Dele (almost).

Wow. Seriously noughtie behaviour. What a beautiful trip down memory lane that was...

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