Soccer-Facebook outage leaves players twiddling their thumbs

Small toy figures are seen in front of displayed Facebook logo in this illustration taken October 4, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

(Reuters) - Tottenham Hotspur's Lucas Moura joked that Monday's near six-hour social media outage meant he finally had a chance to connect with his wife, while Everton's Richarlison saw a fresh opening for carrier pigeons, as soccer players saw the funny side of the blackout.

Facebook Inc blamed a "faulty configuration change" for the interruption that prevented the company's 3.5 billion users from accessing its social media and messaging services such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.