Turks Are Friendly, Like Poking

Still Less Popular than David Hasselhoff

Things can certainly be stretched a bit if your publication tends to be biased toward a particular club.  Filching a release from Futebol Finance, the writers at Bild proclaimed that Bayern Munich is one of the top 20 most popular international clubs per fans of its Facebook page. (Warning: German link)

This level of online popularity trumps that of current Bundesliga leaders Borussia Dortmund and seems to be a smug retort from an organization that tends to be pro-Bayern.

The piece also lets us know that Bild’s own Facebook site is more popular than even Bayern’sm and that Dortmund should be ashamed at its online presence is weak: it has fewer Facebook fans than there are seats at the Westfalenstadion.

Those losers.

When you go to the listing that generated this article—over at Futebol Finance—what’s funny is that Bayern Munich’s numbers are rather paltry in comparison to the other international clubs.  On top of the “Facebook Fans” list are Spanish heavyweights Barca and Real Madrid, whose fans number 6.2 and 5.2 million respectively.  The top ten includes other usual suspects like Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, and AC Milan.

Rather unusual suspect Galatasaray is 3rd behind Real Madrid, though, and Turkish rival Fenerbache is 6th, just behind Liverpool.  Note on the list that a third outfit—Besiktas—also makes the top.  There is no other German club and current Champions League holders Inter don’t even make the top.

So there’s more of a social networking demand for news about silky-smooth forward Hristo Yovov than about Samuel Eto’o?

With only a 45% online penetration in the overall Turkish population, it appears Turkish footy fans are social networking fools.  With over 35 million online users—numbers are from last year—4.6 million of them are fans of the Gala Facebook page while 3.1 million are fans of Fener.

Included with the Besiktas fans, 22% of Turkey’s online community is “Facebooking”with 3 clubs!  I guess Allen Iverson really is a popular guy.

As for Germany, only 13% of its online users–around ten million–appear to be fond of Facebook.  Maybe the German version of Facebook doesn’t have an interesting-enough version of Farmerville to play?

Or perhaps they got tired of all those Mafia Wars requests from their friends.