Do Football Teams Need Official Blogs?

By: Daryl | July 22nd, 2009

Up until now, football blogs have been mostly unofficial. By the fans, for the fans and all that. But now Chelsea FC have taken a step into our world by launching a blog on their official site.

The author’s name is Old Blue Eyes, and he or she seems more than capable of stringing a sentence together. But is that because the writer is based in Chelsea’s Public Relations department?

That would be my best guess. The language used is suitably “bloggy” and relaxed, but the message is the same as usual. It’s the official Chelsea message.

Statements like this one building up to today’s Chelsea vs Inter World Football Challenge match in Los Angeles…

It was a decision that didn’t appear to go down too well with Mourinho. Our former boss is not taking this tournament lightly, and neither will Chelsea.

… are pretty much just not true. Sine the World Football Challenge is an early pre-season tournament, I’m sure both teams will be taking the game at least a little lightly. There’s no use pretending otherwise. And a proper fan written blog wouldn’t have to.

It’s a little dishonest for a football team to dress up press releases like blog entries and send them out into the world hoping readers will trust this more casual voice. Football clubs already have an entire official website and plenty of official spokespeople to deliver whatever information they want to. They don’t need a blog as well.

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Category: World Football

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The Offside RSS Feeds

Richard

if the team are famous,i think they should have the official bogs. there are many people want to see the news about them
David

Competition is never a bad thing. Let the Best Blog win.
Laurie

Seattle guy Taylor Graham has a hysterical occasional blog on the Sounders FC site. He's allowed to be himself. Unfortunately he only updates every few months, and he's missed the entire season so far with injuries. http://www.soundersfc.com/News...

The problem with most official blogs is that, like you said, they're too corporate and PR-based. If I want to read the corporate version of events, I'll just read the press release. Don't try to pretend it's grass roots.
areallaticfromthesouth

Soon the singular 'blog' will become plural - 'blogs'. Chelsea are relaunching a poorly run service where fans can submit their own blogs to the official site.
Barry

I used to go on cfcnet.something (just google "cfc net") which had some good blog-like content, but it seems to be down. [for Chelsea that is]
zeik

i support the idea of an official player blog. i think it brings an interesting perspective and voice outside of press conferences/post-match interviews. the best example i've seen are the jimmy conrad and jay demerit snippets on soccernet. it's comforting to see that football players can display an intelligent side sometimes.
Martin

I subscribe to the 'Spurs blog's RSS feed because it has some fun little details, but post-match commentary is basically just a press release from the club. Not terribly exciting, but not the worst. Certainly not to be mistaken for actual thoughtful commentary on the state of the matches and the team, though. An uncensored coach, manager, or player blog would be awesome, but I doubt it would work in an official, team-sanctioned capacity.
Ian

The only official blog that I think would be even a little interesting to read would be one from an actual team staff member, like a coach or even owner. If there's not a personality to follow, you're right - it seems like just press releases. It was inevitable they'd try it though.