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Facebook Goal! Leaderboard Ranks Most Passionate World Cup Fans

by Caleb Johnson on May 16, 2010 at 11:00 AM

Facebook soccer leaderboard
In less than one month, the entire planet will turn its attention toward South Africa -- home of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Despite our usual distaste for this sport, we can't help being swept up in the patriotism that accompanies this 32-team tournament. Playing on that, Facebook has launched a page that tracks fans' passion for their country's team. According to the Facebook blog, the Facebook Goal! Leaderboard allows football (that's soccer in the U.S.) fans to trash talk, "like" their team and keep up with, as well as post about, World Cup news. The app's prominent feature, the "Passion Index," takes a team's number of likes, and divides that number by the country's Internet population. The resulting number determines a country's rank on the leaderboard, and gives the leading country bragging rights.

As of today, Chile, Honduras and Slovenia have the three most passionate fan bases. Meanwhile, the U.S. is way down at number 19, which means stateside soccer fans have some work to do before the tourney begins on June 11th. Sure, soccer is no American football (if you ask us, anyway), but keeping up with the World Cup sure beats feigning interest in the NBA playoffs. [From: Facebook Blog]

Tags: facebook, Soccer, SocialNetworking, sports, top, web, WorldCup, WorldCup2010

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