As a relatively new member of the WordPress community, I’ve been paying some regular attention to the lists of the Top Blogs and Top Posts on WordPress, to see what’s hip, if you will. In the past week of following these lists, I’ve learned one irrepressible truth: The Arsenal Football Club is where it’s at, hands down.
Personally, I can’t understand how, just the other day, two of the top three WordPress blogs — “Young Guns” and “Gooner Talk” — involved discussions of the new uniform design for the Arsenal Football Club. Out of 3,361,520 blogs on WordPress, those are the top blogs?
Here’s an example of the formerly top post on all of WordPress from the “Young Guns” weblog (somewhere Kiefer Sutherland, Emilio Estevez, Lou Diamond Phillips, Dermot Mulroney, and Charlie Sheen are bullshit, but no matter):
“With Arsenal confirming the new home kit for the next two seasons last week, new pictures are being released of the potential new away kit. Although the initial photos suggested the main colour would be yellow, it seems from these snaps it could be more more golden colour, with maroon and navy trim.
You can see a bigger picture of the proposed design by clicking the thumbnail below. I must say I personally like the design, but the Arsenal logo looks really dodgy.”
Dodgy indeed, but that was the top post. Hey, I’m the last guy to begrudge sports fans their unadulterated support for their team –”good on them” as the English say (I think) — but now I’m just wondering if fans of Arsenal FC are like the Boston Red Sox fans of England? Are they the examplars of obsessive, passionate, live or die by every game English sporting fans? I mean, how else could a change in the jersey colors of Arsenal FC really be considered all that news-worthy? I hate to be overly provincial, I don’t follow much about “football,” but I would have guessed that Manchester United blogs would be dominating the Top 10, if anything. Arsenal FC blogs leave me perplexed.
However, there is an exciting new addition to the WordPress Top 10 Posts today — another blog about soccer — courtesy of the “3N Speaks” weblog: “Topless Soccer: Austria defeats Germany 10-5.” I guess I can more easily understand the popularity of this blog. Here’s the link, try not to get too excited:
http://3nspeaks.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/topless-soccer-austria-defeats-germany-10-5/
UPDATE: There’s now another blog in the Top 10 featuring the same topless soccer story. By the way, how skeezy are those guys behind the net in the 2nd and 5th photo down? If that balding guy with the goatee who’s holding a drink in one hand and has his other hand down his pants isn’t already on a sexual predator watch list, someone please alert Interpol:
http://slanchreport.com/2008/06/16/one-way-to-get-americans-to-like-soccer/
Filed under: Sports | Tagged: Arsenal Football Club, Boston Red Sox, Manchester United
Ha, it’s a trend I’ve noticed too – Arsenal blogs. You could compare most “soccer” fans, especially ones that go to games/support local team as “examplars of obsessive, passionate, live or die by every game English sporting fans”
I never heard about the strip ’saga’. If it’s the away strip they’re talking about – those guys need to get out more, but in general if the home strip was radically changed e/g the colours then there would be uproar from any team’s fans as jersey’s are seen as traditional and some clubs go hand in hand with the colour of the home jersey. Could you imagine Man United or Liverpool without the Red? Milan without the black and red? Madrid without the all-white?
Nice blog,
Daire.
Very good observation!
I am a Manchester United fan and would have loved to see a dedicated blog on wordpress but i don’t think this is gonna be happen…
And yeah it is difficult to understand soccer fans!
I have noticed the Arsenal “trend” too. After some snooping around WordPress, the tendency of WordPress is to give the “Hawt post” recognition to bloggers who post more often. In addition, the “Featured post” similarly goes to people who post more often. That is why most “featured” posts tend to be no great shakes. One of my first posts to WordPress became a “Featured post”, and it wasn’t even close to being up to the same quality of most of my other posts.