There is a cricket World Cup underway, not that you’d know it on social media. As the most hard-fought Premier League title race in years is reaching its climax, football was again at the forefront of this week’s Pitch Inspection.
There was no time for sentimentality at Stamford Bridge, with Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho masterminding a 6-0 victory to spoil the party on Arsene Wenger’s 1000th game in charge of Arsenal. Despite the result, Wenger still registered 68.6% overall positive sentiment on Saturday, which was more than Manchester United manager David Moyes achieved despite registering his second consecutive win (64.6%).
Sentiment towards Wenger was seen to drop 30% during the game, but remained high overall as positive messages poured in for Wenger’s achievement. One of the most influential conversation drivers was @papilokanu, one of the Frenchman’s squad members during Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’ era:
Congrat Arsène wenger on your 1000 games in Arsenal tomorrow. Wish you all the best b/c your the best and deserve the best.
— Kanu Nwankwo (@papilokanu) March 21, 2014
There was no love lost on Sunday however, with positive sentiment dropping to 53% and anger levels reaching 75% at 8am on Sunday morning. “fairytale” and “ruin” were amongst the weekend’s top phrases. How apt.
Back to the cricket and the T20 World Cup entered its group stages and the most influential Twitter user was Bollywood film star @SrBachchan. England faced New Zealand on Saturday and positive sentiment dropped 50% to 32.2% as the rain came in and handed the win to the Black Caps.
“Distinctly average” was a key phrase on Twitter (following England captain Stuart Broad’s analysis of the umpire’s decision) and “professional” also featured heavily in reference to the ECB’s decision to take the England women’s squad full-time.
Shame to be fined. Back to bland and unopinionated press conferences I’m afraid. Draw a line onto the next game!
— Stuart Broad (@StuartBroad8) March 23, 2014
In tennis, the Sony Open continued with Andy Murray looking to defend his Miami Masters title. “solo” was a prominent phrase of the weekend as the Scot continued without a coach following the resignation of Ivan Lendl. Over the weekend, just 10.4% of related content was posted from a mobile device.
To close the weekend, a much anticipated El Clasico took place at the Santiago Bernabeu on Sunday night. As ever, much of the pre-match hype surrounded Barcelona’s Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid. Ronaldo recorded a pre-match positive sentiment score of 61.5%, slightly outdoing that of Messi (57.1%). However, during the intense 90 minutes this switched to 72% positive for Messi and a drop to just 27.5% for FIFA Ballon D’Or winner Ronaldo. In a thrilling 4-3 win for the Catalans, Messi’s “hat trick” featured as a most mentioned phrase, whereas “idiot” was a widely used keyword in relation to Ronaldo’s performance.
