Union

It’s Not Barbara Bottini Part 2, but we Found a Union Burner Account

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Feb 14th, 2022 · 12:27 PM EST

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The Philadelphia Union traded three-year starter Jamiro Monteiro to San Jose this weekend.

Tom Bogert at MLSSoccer.com had it:

Philly now has an open DP spot behind Mikael Uhre and Julian Carranza as Monteiro departs after three seasons with the Union.@Kevin_Kinkead was on the smoke of a big move in the works last night. https://t.co/Rtt8u7QnzX

— Tom Bogert (@tombogert) February 13, 2022

Appreciate the shout out from Tom. I had a sniff of something but couldn’t finish the job. Rats!

Moving Monteiro may seem like a bit of a shock at first, considering that he was a shoe-in starter for three of the best Union teams ever assembled, but he was in the last year of his contract and there was a little bit of a locker room thing going on last year. Some aggravation behind the scenes. The Union also love their young kids, and moving Jamiro gives them the opportunity to push minutes for Jack McGlynn, Leon Flach, and Quinn Sullivan, with captain Alejandro Bedoya and Jesus Bueno also available to play those box-to-box #8 positions in the team’s 4-4-2 diamond system.

Monteiro was at his absolute best in 2019 and 2020, when the Union were more of a pressing team. He was a brilliant midfield connector and seemed to thrive behind Brenden Aaronson, who was a cue-reading machine and the key cog in the system. When Jamiro played as a 10, he was less effective I think, and overall is more of a 10/8 tweener who seemed out of place in this past season’s more passive scheme. He’s still a damn good player, but most Union fans would probably agree that years one and two were better than year three.

Anyway, before the trade, we sniffed out what we think is Jamiro’s burner account. Or it could be a family member. Family members love to do burners to defend their people. Union fan @BalotelliDaGOAT on Twitter noticed a peculiar patterns of tweets coming from the account @jmsm0404, so we investigated to see if we could identify the soccer version of Barbara Bottini.

From my thread:

Account responds mostly to stuff about Jamiro. In this case, here's Jon describing a Monteiro free kick, then an hour later, the account responds: pic.twitter.com/SJxEbFyse5

— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) February 13, 2022

Other tweets are in response to trade rumors, with the account telling various people that they don't know what they're talking about: pic.twitter.com/B0Ahjqnmc3

— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) February 13, 2022

And then when you go through the account’s “liked” tweets, the pattern is the same. Every single like is a tweet about how great Jamiro Monteiro is, or how the Union look like shit without him on the field:

Right, so it’s the Union’s version of the Sixers burner gate. Not NEARLY as significant or damning as the Colangelo disaster, but fun to dig through anyway. I’m not saying this is definitely Jamiro himself, but there’s a lot of smoke here. Could be him, a significant other, mother, sister, brother, father, etc.

Union opener in two weeks, but right now we’re gonna get it back to James Harden and the Philadelphia Eagles.