FIFA World Cup 2006: Official Site

>> FIFA World Cup 2006: Official Site
As Radio 2’s in-house sporting ignoramus, what I look for in any major tournament and event is a site which can combine detailed authoritative coverage with presentation that doesn’t intimidate those of us who don’t follow the sport for the rest of the year. From where I’m sitting, this collaboration with web giants Yahoo looks like an outstanding site with equal appeal to committed fans and lightweights like me!

The homepage can be customised to give pride of place to news stories and fixtures involving two teams of your choice. Elsewhere on the site you can sign up for free SMS alerts so that you receive a text message every time a goal is scored by (or against) the team of your choice, along with a daily trivia factoid and daily text poll.

There are full page profiles and statistics for all 736 players in the tournament, video tours of all 12 German host cities and their respective stadiums, plus a whole By Fans for Fans site aimed at fans travelling to Germany for any of the fixtures.

A heavyweight Fun and Games section includes the official Fantasy League, a predictions game, trivia quiz and Fan of the Match vote.

The 12th Man is the really interactive part of the site, with fan-submitted blogs and photos plus Yahoo Answers which lets you post or answer questions about any aspect of the tournament (from “Who played on the right wing for Cameroon in 1990” to “Is there any solution to football violence?”)

Finally, free downloads include including a toolbar for Internet Explorer complete with one-click access to news, team stats, world cup blogs and message boards – plus Yahoo search and a built in anti-spyware tool.

Comments

[Nick Perry]

It's a pity that there is not a feature on this site for original world cup songs. Have we really found one we love this Worl Cup??? I don't think so.

Now then.... I reckon I have!!

An old 80's band Simon Pure has recorded a brilliant world cup anthem and have made it available as a free download on the wed2music site. Its pretty odd and quirky but really has something to offer in the tradition of dodgy world cup songs.

Check it out.

The URL address is: http://www.wed2music.co.uk/

Nick

[Anonymous]

Can I ask why you are recycling links -- this website works best with NEW urls for us...

I like the site muchly - but wish you would not recycle and reshuffle articles to make it look like new items have been posted.

Just my tuppence worth!

[Miles Mendoza]

Fair comment - Explanation follows, and I'll try to keep this brief.

In general I try to post links to each website of the day before I go over to the studio for each day's programme - so that the link is available by the time I go on air.

However regular listeners will know that if an interview in the final hour of Steve's show overruns, then Website of the Day sometimes gets dropped - and when that happens, the site that was due to feature gets carried over.

Usually a site will transmit the next day that I'm on air, but sometimes (as was the case for the World Cup site) it's neccessary to wait for a few days or even weeks so that a particular site transmits on an appropriate day (ie the day of an England match).

When a link has been posted on this site before it is featured on the programme, I reshuffle the post so that it appears correctly in the archive on the date when that site was featured on the programme.

I realise that this can be frustrating for people who visit this site every day or subscribe to the RSS feed - but I still feel it's important that listeners searching for a link can find it by searching the archive for the date on which it featured.

But thanks for raising the point - and for liking the site apart from the "repeats"!

Cheers
Miles

[anonymous]

Hi there.

Thanks for the response.

I must admit - I knew there was a radio connection, but not being an avid listener of all things radio, I didn't realise that's how this site worked.

I thought it was a simple new-recommendation-a-day type affair, but there's obviously a good reason for the delay/rejigging of links!

Thanks again for getting back to me.