Xabi Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen made history by clinching their first-ever Bundesliga title last Sunday with a five-star win over Wolfsburg. To win the league after an incredible and invincible season, in front of your own fans was a dream come true for the club.
After the final whistle, it was a glorious sight for any football fan in the world. The BayArena was painted by the club colours of red and black as the fans invaded the pitch and flooded the stadium to celebrate the historic triumph and run shoulder to shoulder with their heroes.
As pictures of this fanatic celebration circulated around, fans online spotted a familiar face from the football influencers community among the spectators present at the BayArena. His presence irked a bit of uneasiness on part of the football twitter community.
Theo Ogden, popularly known as Thogden, is a football content creator and influencer. His rise to fame has been primarily down to his content on TikTok. He started his career on YouTube at the age of 13 and since then amassed over 2 million subscribers and followers. His father Stephen Ogden, a former politician, is also a major character in his venture, who Theo calls ‘Thogdad’ in his videos.
Hailing from London, he pursues storytelling through his videos and vlogs on YouTube, combining his passions of film making and football. On the other hand, his social media channels are more mainstream when it comes to content such as fan reactions and paid partnerships. He attracted spotlight during the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar where he made a world record covering each and every game of the 64 played.
For this very purpose, he was there at the BayArena on Sunday to witness history and delirium from the supporters and produce his vlog as Bayer Leverkusen secured the Bundesliga title with five games to go.
However, it’s fair to say, his attendance at the game was not received well by the football twitter community.
Many fans online are not impressed with Thogden watching the game for the purpose of clicks and money, as they believe, the seat or the ticket could have been bought by a passionate fan who probably had been waiting a lifetime for this moment and to witness it live.
A lot has also been made of the company Theo went to the stadium with. One of the them, calls himself the German Thogdad, is a Dortmund fan. A fact which has been unpleasantly received. While it is more than acceptable to simply watch a match in your own country, it is claimed that they simply tagged along with Thogden for the aim of making content while it meant so much more for the fans around them.
The claims are boosted by even more depth as it is said by the Twitterati, as big of a Bolton fan as he calls himself to be, he missed their biggest game of the season (against Portsmouth) in their fight to achieve promotion to the Championship for producing a vlog that will surely ensure more clicks and hits.
Not to mention, the support he had to provide for his ‘brother’ Nathan Tella whilst tagging him as Jeremie Frimpong.
This is also not the first time Theo has been accused by or caused a backlash from the football supporters online of crashing passionate events for the purpose of producing content.
Football aficionados claim Thogden had once used a Newcastle fan suffering from cardiac arrest during a game as a thumbnail for his video which turned out to be clickbait. In addition to that, he once paid a young Bolton Wanderers fan off to take the goalkeeping gloves from him that the kid received from the team goalkeeper himself. A Bolton fan himself, it is said his gesture seemed to have upset the kid and leave him distraught.
While Thogden is a famous name in the football influencer world, having met superstars like Messi, Thierry Henry and Drogba. He is a polarising figure and has followers and non-affirmatives alike. While football is a sport of emotions, the reason behind its title as the beautiful game, content creators, influencers and consequently Theo have full right to capitalise on it as they are fans themselves.
However, if it is at a cost of a fellow fan’s passion and love for the game, it’s not something that will usually go down well with the footballing community. That’s where the difference lies.