Bob Bradley re-signed as the United States men’s national soccer team manager on Monday. The announcement, which came as something of a surprise, helped vault the the coach into the top five of United States trending Twitter topics and into the world top 10.
The news caused outlets around the globe to pen stories. Google lists 560 articles about the decision and the image in this post shows there were more than 270 penned Monday afternoon, up from basically zero on Friday. The US national team, it appears, matters in America.
Google Trends, however, tell a different story. Details, pictures after the jump.
The first image is the term “Bob Bradley” trending worldwide on Google. It peaked in mid-August, when the coach was rumored as a candidate for the job at Aston Villa, an English Premier League squad. (The EPL is the best soccer league in the world.) What you can’t see on the screenshot is that more than two-thirds of the searches were coming from across the pond. The next one makes this clear.
In this image, which is of the US Internet only, you see “Bob Bradley” as a search term peak once again in mid-August, the period corresponding with the Villa rumors. Then, however, the line disappears. The cause? There weren’t enough searches to register.
The conclusion: Soccer matters in the US, but it’s life and death in England.
