Twittering About – Womens Professional Soccer League To Use Twitter In Games

For all keen football fans out there a question: to what extent does your fanaticism go? Do you crave information about your team, your club, its players? Do you search with the ravenous hunger of a caveman for news and transfer gossip? Do you scour all available media outlets for any titbit of information that takes you to the very heart of the beautiful game?

Do you consider it your duty to remain up to speed with the on and off-field activities of players; how they played, who they associate with, where they go to pick up WAGs?

Well if you do then you will probably be interested in the latest technological development, one that could greatly enhance the way in which we as fans experience football – Twitter.

Twitter is the latest in a long line of internet phenomena. A microblogging, social-networking platform of sorts, it encourages users to declare to the world an answer to the simple question – ‘What are you doing?’

Twitter users respond by posting up a response or ‘tweet’ (using no more than 140 characters) to their audience of followers, who then have access to the inner workings of said person’s mind. Generally tweets can be anything from ‘I’m eating toast’ to an exploration into the metaphysical structure of existence, so long as the 140 character limit is not breached.

The site has grown exponentially. Created in 2006, millions of users are now registered worldwide, including several celebrities who lap up the opportunity to engage directly with their scores of fans. Now it seems football is getting in on the act.

Over in the United States, the inaugural season of the Womens Professional Soccer League kicks off this weekend, and two players have agreed to ‘tweet’ thoughts to their online followers while the match itself takes place.

Players participating in the match between LA Sol and Washington Freedom, the WPS’ first ever professional game, will take time out from the business of playing football in order to update their fans on the action via Twitter.

No word on how or when the players will do this (‘yeh I’ll take the corner in a sec ref, just telling the internet what i think of that last counter attack’) but it seems Aly Wagner and Katy Jo Spisak will do just that at some point during the 90 minutes on 29th March at the Home Depot Center, where
the match takes place.

General managers from the new seven team women’s league approved the idea in a meeting and, depending on fan response, league officials will consider allowing players to ‘tweet’ during games all season.

Implications of this arrangement in the long-term could be fascinating. Imagine a player being sent off and, minutes afterwards, ‘tweeting’ us his impulsive reactions direct from the dressing room. ‘That was never a red, Phil Dowd is a c***.’

Or the introspective post-substitution tweet: ‘I won’t lie I played awfully – maybe I’m just not cut out for this level of football.’ It would certainly beat the bland vacuousness of the traditional post-match interview on Sky.

While the idea is certainly open to scepticism (imagine Roy Keane’s reaction), it could also prove a potentially interesting avenue for football, should players and officials choose to get involved. Some celebrities in other fields have genuinely quite compelling Twitter accounts, available to all users as is the site’s nature. The result being we get to see the person in a different light; behind the media persona, on a more natural, human level.

Might Twitter’s interactive nature, and the chance it provides for direct contact with fans, if used correctly, add a new dimension to football and the media? It is possible. Then again it could go down the route of the player website, often about as interesting and edgy as a satsuma.

In terms of impact Twitter may not manage to hit the heights of Facebook, whose site helped Bryan Gunn get the Norwich City job, amongst other feats. But if used intelligently, in future we could see Twitter opening up an entirely new, fresh aspect to the relationship between player and fan.

What do you think? Is the WPS’ decision to allow players to use Twitter during games a good idea? Let us know by leaving a comment. And if you want to follow Just Football on Twitter (yeh in the end we couldn’t resist), click here.

The Media, USA, Womens Professional Soccer