The players of England appear to be drawing attention for other reasons besides their TV habits, even if they have recently confirmed their place in the Euro 2024 semi-finals.
Declan Rice, 25, and Cole Palmer, 22, of the Three Lions, shockingly disclosed on Instagram on Saturday night that they are covert viewers of the hit ITV2 series Love Island.
On the dating program, which is presently in its eleventh season, a new set of islanders is paired with a partner and given a series of challenges to complete until they discover their ideal match.
The program is a popular component of pop culture, with millions of devoted followers, and it appears that the top football players in the country have taken notice of it.
Declan posted a picture of himself, Jude Bellingham, and Ivan Toney supporting on the field with the caption, “Togetherness,” just hours after England secured their place in the semi-finals by defeating Switzerland in the Dusseldorf penalty shootout.
Semis we coming!!!’ But it was the comment section that turned heads. Alongside the hundreds of congratulation messages, there was one from Cole reading, ‘WHOS EMMAAAAAAAAA’, prompting Declan to mimic his reply along with two laughing emojis.
Declan and Cole were caught referencing Love Island after winning match between England and Switzerland
The remark, which alluded to an indirect moment between Love Island star Nicole Samuels and Ciaran Davies that went viral this week, may have seemed cryptic to some, but viewers of the popular TV show quickly understood its meaning.
The show is currently in its Casa Amor section of the contest, where the girl and boy islanders split into groups, with one remaining in the main villa and the others moving to Casa Amor, where they mingle with a new group of islanders testing any current relationships.
Despite being divided, the two villas participate in text-based competitions; the most recent one was a game of dares.
Nicole went viral after she became upset about Emma winning a lot of challenges in Casa Amor
One of the dares listed in this week’s game was ‘The youngest boy must snog the girl he fancies the most for five seconds’, which prompted Ciaran, who is coupled up with Nicole, to pash an islander in Casa Amor.
He chose newcomer Emma Milton.
Emma was then picked for a few more dares throughout the challenge, with her wins being repeated back to the main villa, causing Nicole to shout, ‘Who’s Emma?’ over and over again.
In case you were wondering who Emma is, this is Emma
One moment of her shouting, ‘Who’s Emma?’ proved quite entertaining to fans, who quickly uploaded the video to the social media app TikTok, where it went viral.
The video has earned over 50,000 likes and 500,000 views, with Declan and Cole clearly making up two of them. It seems they aren’t the only England players to enjoy a bit of Love Island.
During the Euros in 2020, Jack Grealish shared an image to his social media accounts showing the team watching along on a cinema-sized screen at their accommodation.
Love Island has been running since 2015. However, it only started making headway in terms of viewership in 2017.
By 2019, the show reached a record with more than six million people watching with the final becoming the most watched in the show’s history.
In recent years, views have been dropping and in 2023, the series premiere saw 1.3 million tune in.
Despite the drop in numbers, many contestants who take part in the show, including Molly-Mae Hague, Tommy Fury, Amber Gill and Maura Higgins, have gone on to become household names.