In the past two weeks of World Cup action, 16 teams have been narrowed down to just two—Spain and the Netherlands—who will face off in the World Cup final tomorrow. For both countries, there are high stakes: not only are the two sides contending for the title of best football team in the world, but this will be the first-ever Cup win for either team and Spain is in the finals for the first time. We took another look at the search data to see what people have been interested in during the round of 16, quarterfinals and semifinals.
Some matches, of course, were more interesting to people than others—whether they were eagerly anticipated or just more nail-biting during play. Brazil, chosen as the champion in many an office pool, lost to the Netherlands in a quarterfinal upset. Perhaps it’s indicative of people’s disappointment in that match that
Felipe Melo, who
gave up an own goal and then was shown a red card in the 73rd minute with his country down 2-1, was
more searched-for than
Robinho, who made Brazil’s one goal in the match. Another favored South American team, Argentina, also lost in the quarterfinals, to Germany. It’s interesting to note that searches for that team’s two biggest names,
Lionel Messi and coach Diego Maradona, have spiked in popularity with each match—and the player was usually more interesting to people than the coach. But over time—and after Messi’s skills failed to carry his team to the semis—
Maradona overtook Messi in search volume. Clearly, his fate as Argentina coach in the future is more up for debate than Messi’s career (after all, the latter has a comfy year-round spot on FC Barcelona).
Controversy
continued to be a major driver of search traffic. On June 27, Argentina’s first goal in their victorious match against Mexico, a
Carlos Tévez header, was widely considered offsides (and therefore should have been disallowed). That same day, Germany beat England 4-1, although many say it should have been 4-2 thanks to a
Frank Lampard goal that just barely made it into the net but wasn’t counted. Both of these calls brought the issue of
instant replay to the forefront in an already controversial tournament.
Perhaps the most surprisingly exciting game was the quarterfinal match between Uruguay and Ghana. Ghana had several shots on goal in the last minutes of extra time, with the game tied 1-1. Uruguay’s
Luis Suárez saved his team from a near-certain loss with a handball that earned him a red card (and
increased search traffic). Uruguay went on to win in penalty kicks, and became the only South American country to make the semifinals. Searches for [penalty kick]
were at their highest on the day of this game—they had also spiked on June 26, when USA’s
Landon Donovan scored on a penalty kick against Ghana, and on June 29, the day of another quarterfinal match (between Japan and Paraguay) that also ended in penalty kicks.
Read the rest at
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/world-cup-search-trends-final-countdown.html
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