The 2010 FIFA World Cup – in Google Trends

As the South African World Cup draws towards its end, I thought that it would be useful to have a look at what Google Trends has made of the competition.

The Players

It’s a simple process. I’ve just pulled out the names of five players – Robert Green, David Villa, Lionel Messi, Arjen Robben and Diego Forlan – who I feel have had (for one reason or another)  notable tournaments. And this is what Google Trends comes out with:

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It all started off with a big spike for Robert Green after the USA game – testimony to the awfulness of his error and, quite probably, the fact that people knew little about him. They had to type his name into Google to find out more.

The most hyped player, Lionel Messi, has had consistent attention all the way until Argentina’s exit the other day. David Villa’s popularity has rocketed up in the past week with his cluster of goals, as has the Uruguayan, Diego Forlan’s. Villa’s spike after his goal against Paraguay just about beat Robert Green’s earlier on in total number of global searches.

It’s interesting to note that, in comparison, barely anyone has been interested in Arjen Robben, the best Dutch player – despite the fact that he has scored two goals in four games and been an important part of a team that might win the whole competition.

The Coaches

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Here’s the same exercise performed for a handful of manager/coaches: Vicente del Bosque, Diego Maradona, Fabio Capello, Raymond Domenech and Bert Van Marwijk.

It’s plain to see that Maradona is the most high profile coach on this list – followed by Fabio Capello, who has about two thirds of the global interest. Raymond Domenech, who presided over the French shambles, briefly rivalled the two of them in interest but has now slipped off into obscurity while – interestingly enough – no one seems to be too interested in searching for information about the coaches of either of the finalists – Vicente del Bosque of Spain and Bert Van Marwijk of Holland.

So. If we consider Google Trends to be reflective of general interest in a topic, then, these graphs suggest that it is far better to let the players and coaches get on with it – with less of the microscopic scrutiny – rather than whipping ourselves up in the usual frenzy.

As if.

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Here are the Google Trends results for players and the Google Trends results for coaches – in case you’d like to try some different ones.

Image credit: Eustaquio Santimano on Flickr