Three Anonymous Accounts and the 'Useless' Shadow Cast on Elkan Baggott

I remember the way Mark Sykes left the pitch in the 70th minute of the London derby between Millwall and West Ham. 19 September 2026. Millwall were leading 2-0. Sykes walked slowly, clapping towards The Den. The man replacing him was Elkan Baggott - a 23-year-old Indonesian centre-back. Nobody in the stands shouted his name. There was only the sound of studs from a young player stepping into a match where he had made no mistake, yet would absorb every criticism. Four minutes after Baggott came on, N'Golo Kanté pulled one back to make it 2-1. In the 80th minute, Konstantinos Mavropanos headed the equaliser. In six minutes, a two-goal lead had vanished. That night, from a few anonymous X accounts, tweets appeared. They called Baggott useless, claimed he ruined the game. No evidence of individual error. No specific passage of play identified. Only temporal correlation. And then a sports outlet in Jakarta turned those three tweets into an article titled: "Reactions of British People after Elkan Baggott Played in Millwall vs West Ham Match, Called a Useless Player." Look at a detail almost nobody mentioned: the 70th minute is not a bad checkpoint. Bringing on a centre-back for a wide midfielder while leading 2-0 is a textbook game-management decision. But football does not operate according to a tactical whiteboard. When a team is pushed deep in a London derby, it is the concentration of the entire collective - not one individual - that keeps the score safe. It must be said clearly: a defensive substitution while leading is a signal that the coaching staff want to protect the result. But the line between protecting and retreating is thin. When a team retreats too deep, they hand control of the tempo to the opponent. In a London derby, that is like inviting trouble. The first goal conceded came in the 74th minute. The second was a header from a set piece. Both belong to collective defensive organisation: who marks whom, who holds position, who wins the aerial duel. No xG statistic, no shot map emerged from this match to quantify blame on a substitute. Yet lazy conclusions were still drawn. Because finding a scapegoat is always easier than reading the game. Pause for a moment and ask: if Baggott were not an Indonesian player, would that article exist? The answer is no. The 23-year-old carries a media value far beyond his current sporting value in the Championship. But because he is a centre-back for the Indonesian national team, because millions of supporters in Southeast Asia follow his every step in England, this story became an international article. His reach into the Indonesian market exceeds his current role at Millwall. The uncomfortable truth: nobody who wrote that article actually watched the match with tactical eyes. They saw an angry tweet, a name prominent enough to drive traffic, and a headline shocking enough to be shared. Baggott does not need forgiveness because he has done nothing wrong. He needs someone to stand beside him without judgement - the way we still talk about Saka after the Euro 2026 final. Instead, he received a verdict pronounced by three anonymous accounts, appealed by a newsroom in Jakarta, and circulated as self-evident truth. Let me speak about English football culture, because I have lived here long enough to know it is not always as ugly as those tweets suggest. There is a layer of supporters who genuinely understand football. They know a derby can flip everything in six minutes. They know a substitution is a small part of the picture. But their voices rarely travel as far as the keyboard noise of anonymous accounts. This imbalance does not just hurt young players; it poisons the entire ecosystem of football debate. Here is the contrarian angle: the story that "British people called Baggott useless" almost certainly exaggerated the anger of the British public. Read the source carefully: only three X accounts were cited, none verified. Three tweets, three strangers representing nobody but themselves. Yet the headline speaks of "reactions of British people", creating the illusion of a nationwide wave of criticism - when in reality, three individuals were typing in their bedrooms. This is a phenomenon I have witnessed many times in 15 years: social media amplifies a solitary voice into a revolt, and journalism - chasing clicks - records that revolt as if it were social fact. In a media market like Indonesia, where "Southeast Asian players in Europe" is always a hot topic, those three tweets became proof of something many were waiting to have confirmed. As if they were looking for an excuse to say: "See? The British underrate him too." The truth is, Baggott is at the start of his peak-age window - 23 is the age when a centre-back begins to mature tactically. Twenty minutes of one derby do not define a player, just as three tweets do not define a nation. Let me tell you a small story. In 2026, after Bukayo Saka missed the decisive penalty in the Euro final, a wave of racist abuse flooded his social media. But in those same days, I witnessed something remarkable: Arsenal fans and supporters of other clubs wrote long letters, pasted posters of support outside the Emirates, building a wall of positive noise loud enough to drown out the hate. Saka did not need forgiveness; he needed someone beside him without judgement. The question for Baggott: will he receive that same solidarity from his community, or only an article copying three tweets? But that night, leaving The Den and walking along South Bermondsey, I remembered something I deeply believe: the rhythm of a match can only be heard when you put your ear to the grass. If we listen that way, we will hear the gasping breath of a Millwall collective that lost its way for six minutes - not the footsteps of a 23-year-old entering the pitch in the 70th. The loudest applause does not come from the stands, but from the empty seats. Three anonymous accounts can create a headline. But the real question is: will we - writers, readers, supporters - stay sober enough not to turn one wrong touch of fate into a verdict on a human being?