The Orange Chair

When in Rome, do as the Romans do, as Obelix would have said. Since I’m in London, I decided to catch some live footy action on Saturday afternoon: Chelsea FC vs Tottenham Hotspurs at the Stamford Bridge. It was an entertaining game, even though Lampard, Drogba and Schevchenko were not playing. Other players more than made up for it: Joe Cole played really well, and Frenchman Nicolas Anelka almost scored in his first game for the blues.

The home team won 2 x 0, first goal by Brazilian Juliano Beletti and second one by Shaun Wright-Phillips, after a fantastic play by J. Cole. I wonder how many people in Brazil know that Beletti’s first name is Juliano - in Brazil, most players are known by a single name.

Here are some more pics (check the full set in Flickr):

And what would a football game have to do with Web 2.0, you must be asking? Well, two days ago I learned in the CBC Search Engine podcast that MyFootballClub, a British website, is offering anybody the opportunity to own and manage a real football club for £35 a year. It’s not an online game, or a fantasy league. The team is Ebbsfleet United and they aspire to reach Football League soon. According to their website:

For the first time in football history, fans have the opportunity to buy and then take control of a professional football club – both on and off the pitch. Every MyFootballClub member will have an equal say in team selection, player transfers and the running of the club.

This site takes the Monday morning chat about football to a whole new level. If you don’t like a player or want to fire the coach, you can really do something about it. I wish I had that power with Brazil’s national team or the Toronto Raptors. My oldest brother is a huge football fan and he goes to every game of our hometown team (the little known Ituano FC, if you really need to know), but the only voice he’s got is when he curses at the linesman during the games. Believe me, he makes the most from it: he and his friends know bad words in Portuguese that I can only imagine what they mean .

I’m not sure if this concept of wisdom of crowds applied to professional sports will ever work, but they are up to a good start, having more than 25,000 owners already. And I agree with this fella in the BBC website:

While I wouldn’t rule out a meteoric charge up the leagues to the
Premier League, I believe MyFootballClub’s success will hopefully be
judged on whether we’ve improved the club for its supporters and its
community. If that means we only get them one division higher,
or get them only a thousand more supporters a week, then to me that’s a
success.

Now I’m asking myself: Is there really anything in the world that cannot be web-two-oh-fied? In the last few months, I have heard about NGO 2.0, cyber crime 2.0 and even environment 2.0. Just google “<put any word here> 2.0″ and you will be amazed about how people have been trying to use the wisdom of crowds and the web as platform.