Throughout yesterday’s chaos about Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid tweeted about soccer

Shortly after Keith Pompey reported that Ben Simmons wanted a trade out of Philadelphia, it felt like the entire world of Philly sports went up in flames on social media. No one was happy with the news that it was Ben who would be refusing to show up to 76ers camp after a disappointing end to last years season with the 76ers.
Everyone on Twitter was firing out tweets, cursing at Ben and saying dumb things about “stans” and “apologists.” Hell, even probably the weirdest, and most creepy person I’ve ever seen, Brett Eskin, was calling other people weird for wanting Ben Simmons to be good during his time here in Philadelphia. Holy irony. Through it all, one man remained calm and collected. That of course, was Joel Embiid.
Embiid fired off two tweets yesterday during the chaos of yesterday’s Ben Simmons news. Of course, there had to be some type of reference to what just happened with his points. Let’s take a look at both tweets and try to make sense of what the big fella was referencing during yesterday’s Philly sports meltdown.
Tweet #1 in question:
I don’t believe that this tweet has anything to do with Ben Simmons directly. Embiid is a big soccer fan. I’m certainly not, but if I’m not mistaken, the summer transfer window closes at 11pm BST (6pm EST, 3pm PST) on Tuesday, August 31st, with an additional two hour period for clubs who have already submitted deal sheets in time.
The timing aligns with what Google is telling me the summer transfer window is. On 97.5 The Fanatic last night, they were under the impression that this was specifically directed at Ben Simmons because there are no trades in soccer, just transfers, but look, it’s also called futbol and not soccer and that doesn’t stop people in this country switching up the terminology. Full disclosure, I know nothing about soccer so maybe this doesn’t make as much sense as I’d like to think.
Regardless, these tweets came right after news broke about Ben Simmons. At the very least, Embiid saw that and continued on his day, carefree about the Simmons reports.
Tweet #2 in question.
Currently, in soccer, the big news with Joel Embiid’s team, Real Madrid, is their attempts to land French star Kylian Mbappe. As we mentioned, that summer transfer window came to an end yesterday. In soccer, you usually only have from July until the end of August to acquire names during the summer and Tuesday night was the deadline for deals.
Real Madrid, unfortunately, did not land Mbappe, but the transfer window opens again in, you guessed it, January. Back to basketball, the reason above is 99% what Joel meant with this tweet, but Philly has some interesting opponents that month. I highly doubt that Joel Embiid looked this deep into the 76ers schedule in terms of Ben Simmons “preferred trade destinations”, which are a total joke by the way. Why would the 76ers let Ben Simmons go where ever he wants? Ugh. Will get back to that later.
Anyways, the 76ers will host the Kings and both LA teams towards the end of January, and according to Pompey’s report, Ben’s top destination in a trade is any of the California teams.
Either tweet doesn’t really indicate much. I sure do like to think that in the back of Embiid’s mind, was the fact that he could care less about Ben Simmons and would just carry on his day, enjoying the offseason, and talking about some good old fashioned soccer.
Mandatory Credit: Matt Slocum, AP