England fans shamed in Google football poll

Although it ended last weekend, Google is still keen on trumpeting the World Cup, even if its news isn't particularly flattering for English support.

Google, predictably, has been tracking what web searches were made for what teams, and thinks it is in a position to tell us which teams have the most loyal fans. This from a country that calls the game soccer!

Anyway, throughout the tournament Google set about answering some questions, such as which teams had the most loyal fans, and which game captured the attention of the world the most.

It also looked at when people were searching for football related information, such as that about individual players. Perhaps unsurprisingly it found that queries were high before a game, plummeted on kick off, spiked back up at halftime, dropped off again, and then quickly rose after the match.

This part of the research we feel was something of a waste of time, but Google did uncover some other interesting stats, not least of all the fact the English fans do not spend a huge amount of time on the internet Googling things about football.

Of course we like to think that this is because they are doing more reasonable things like talking about it in the pub, or just talking about it in general.

Maybe the English are just more clued up in general, and that is the reason why we languish down at 14th place in the Google rankings. Of course, we were beaten by the Germans, who came in second, but top of the rankings were Brazil.

Just to prove that turning up in South Africa was not a total waste of time for the English players, the match against Germany was the second highest queried game, and in fact was only beaten by the final.

People-wise the most popular player, in search terms at least, was Spain's David Villa, who not only has the glory of winning a World Cup under his belt, but also this odd achievement.

It's hard to imagine which will make his mum prouder.

16 Jul 2010