About that Santi Cazorla story on L'Equipe...

There was a bit of a ripple of joy on twitter this afternoon, which those of you on the internet maybe saw, involving a certain playmaking midfielder from Malaga CF, Santi Cazorla, whom you may or may not recognize as a player heavily linked with Arsenal over the past couple of weeks. The cause of the ripple was the French sporting newspaper L'Équipe, who printed this in their real-time transfer ticker at 19h39 French time today:

L'international espagnol Santiago Cazorla quitte Malaga pour s'engager en faveur d'Arsenal, l'annonce ayant été faite ce jeudi après-midi par le joueur sur son compte Twitter (voir ci-dessous). Le milieu offensif formé à Oviedo est passé par Huelva et Villarreal. Il compte 47 sélections sous le...

-- Source: L'Équipe

Translated, that roughly comes out as (italics mine):

The Spanish International Santiago Cazorla leaves Malaga to commit to Arsenal, the announcement was made Thursday afternoon by the player on his Twitter account (see below). The attacking midfielder formed in Oviedo went through Huelva and Villarreal. There are 47 selections in the ...

Pretty neat-sounding, right? Ah, but there's a snag, you see: Santi Cazorla does not have his own twitter account. The account mentioned above, @SantiCazorla12, is fake:

More Cazorla rubbish. @santicazorla12 is not the player's Twitter account. Thanks to @danimarin1 for clarifying this. caughtoffside.com/2012/07/26/san….

— Christian Machowski (@ChristianMcr) July 26, 2012

Although the linked story from L'Équipe's transfer ticker does not mention the twitter account, there's nothing to separate it from the little blurb that does. And then there was this little beauty of a retraction on the twitter account in question:

Cualquier tweet diciendo Cazorla es un jugador de la AFC ya no es cierto. El club dará a conocer oficialmente si se ha hecho.

— @Santicazorla12 (@Santicazorla12) August 2, 2012

Which, translated, is "Any tweet saying Cazorla is a player in the AFC is no longer true. The club will announce officially if it was done."

Thanks, guys.

***UPDATE: It has come to our attention that there is another twitter account that L'Équipe might have meant. My deepest apologies for not finding it before. However, it changes very little in actual fact, here, as this account is not verified, has only tweeted 22 times, and also, this:

@tobescoe @scazorla12 @legrove I don't know but I very, very much doubt it

— Sid Lowe (@sidlowe) August 2, 2012

This is not to say that Cazorla may not eventually come to Arsenal, and this isn't anything that renders earlier reports about his medical in London obsolete, but let's all come down out of the clouds for a moment--we're about where we were yesterday, folks. Carry on, my wayward son(s and daughters).