Following Football on Twitter

Football brings me to Twitter, although initially it was politics. I opened my Twitter account in August, 2008. Frankly, I had no idea why I joined, maybe it had to do with watching Rick Sanchez on CNN — Rick’s List was all about connecting with the audience via Twitter. Using Twitter, I followed the Obama campaign, which I wholeheartedly supported since February, 2007 and the Obama campaign followed back.  I found out Joe Biden was selected as the running mate using Twitter.

Shortly after the announcement I got bored with Twitter and went back to Facebook, where I could reconnect and chat with friends.  My network of friends was global since I’ve been globetrotting from the age of 4. There, I talked about every topic. When the World Cup rolled around, football was a topic I quickly jumped into. Childhood friends brought up our sticker collections, and one of them even remembered the orange Holland shirt I wore in Grade 5. I congratulated friends when their national team won or consoled friends when their national team frustrated them.

The 2010 World Cup in South Africa was very special to me. I was so proud of the first World Cup being played on African soil. I even bought the World Cup soundtrack on iTunes. Twitter provided me with a World Cup 2010 background, which I still have on my profile. Twitter made the experience a lot of fun by using flags when you typed country acronyms. Finally, I figured out how to use Twitter effectively.

After the World Cup, I started boring my Facebook friends with my football talk, so I ventured off to Twitter to talk football. I added the club I supported to my profile bio and started following the #FCBayern hashtag. Slowly, I started picking up followers who also supported Bayern. Finding Bayern followers was fun because we started watching games together. It soon became a routine to watch the match and tweet. Since most of my followers were political followers, I made it a point to explain the game, the players and the results in more detail (140 characters worth).  I also started following football writers and bloggers who tweeted about football, and shared links to their articles and postings. I read their work, shared it and started conversing with some of them. I am now a regular reader of their work and a booster as well.

Now, tweeting about football most the time, I changed my Twitter bio again to include the other club I love, Benfica. This was soon after the January transfer window opened, and Benfica was going to sell their most beloved player. I was heartbroken, but not alone, since I had Benfica fans to talk to about the transfer. I never had anyone to talk to about the Eagles during the time I supported Benfica. Now with Twitter, I was able to find other Eagles fans. Benfica sold David Luiz to Chelsea and, along the way, Chelsea fans discovered me and started engaging me. I now have a football community I belong to where I can talk about football to worldwide followers — my football world.

Twitter is a wonderful place to follow whatever your interest is. My interest is football, a topic most Americans don’t bring up in casual conversation. In the part of the world I live in, the Eagles play in Philadelphia — in the Twitter-sphere, the Eagles play in Lisbon.