X (formerly Twitter) is hands down a great source of football entertainment, ranging from memes to insightful tweets. It is also a platform prone to a lot of footballing banter, some of which is in part a ramification of the millions of memes on players and clubs.
Recently, the term ‘The Orange Devils’ has been coined by football fans on X in relation to Manchester United. Erik ten Hag’s side, who are called ‘The Red Devils’, travelled to St. James Park to take on Newcastle United in matchday 14 of the Premier League this past weekend.
Heading into the game, they were in sixth position in the table with 24 points from 13 games, while their opponents were one place below them in seventh with 23 points from 13 games. Thanks to a 55th-minute Anthony Gordon goal, the hosts bagged the three points and subjected United to their seventh league loss this season to jump above them in the table.
Following the game, fans took to X.com to engage in sharing and consumption of memes on Manchester United. A popular football-related account on X, Troll Football, posted a photo of the player ratings for the visitors. This was based on the ratings the popular football application FotMob had given to the Red Devils’ players, with the starting players all getting rated in the orange-coloured category.
The colour of the ratings imply how well or how poorly a player played. Red means poor, orange means average, yellow means good, and green means very good. Given the fact that the ratings of all United players were to show how average the players were, the term ‘The Orange Devils’ started to go viral.
Ten Hag has been short in ideas this season, with the team struggling in the Premier League. If that wasn’t enough, the 2008 Champions League winners currently find themselves at the bottom of their Champions League group with just one game to go.
They will need a win against table-toppers Bayern Munich at Old Trafford and hope that the Copenhagen vs Galatasaray game ends in a draw if they are to progress to the Round of 16.
