Global Football Monitor: What fans think of World Cup

The survey, organized by football blog network Footballunited.com* and Hattrick.org, claimed to be the largest online football management game, attracted more than 100 000 participants, and two million individual answers were submitted. Now it is time to reveal the complete findings of this milestone survey.

"With more than 100 000 respondents I think we present quite a good picture of what the football fans of today feel about the game, about the tournament and about the participating national teams", said Will Rowan, managing director of Footballunited.com.

"What the survey gives us is an insight of the hopes, aspirations and rivalries in the world of football as it looks today. The World Cup is a huge event and it continues to catch the hearts of billions of people around the world, the Global Football Monitor is a perfect warm up with the games soon to kick off in South Africa."

So what do the fans have to say about South Africa?

• Most of the South African fans will spend more time each day on the World Cup compared to the global fan average. 83% claim they will spend between 1-5 hours daily (global average is 76%).
  
• 28% of the South African fans believe that Spain will win the World Cup (global average 39%).
  
• 37% of the South African fans have their own country as their favourite team. Low compared to the Argentineans where 88% had their own country as favourite. On second and third place the South African fans have England (21%) and Spain (9%) as favourite teams.
  
• The South African fans least want to see France, Spain or Brazil as the tournament winner (12% each). In global average, since the last survey 2006, Italy has passed Germany as the country that respondents least of all wants to see as winners, Italy gets 20% of the global votes in the contest that nobody wants to win.
  
• 49% of the South African fans think Lionel Messi (35% global average) will be the star of the tournament, while 12% believe he will be the biggest disappointment...
  
• The South African fans are of the opinion that the South African team will go furthest in the tournament (39%), while the global opinion believes that the Ivory Coast (39%) will be the best African team.
  
• The South African fans have an average interest in fair play. 33% compared to global average 33%.33% of the South African fans say that quality is more important than winning. 39% of the global fans say the same.

The complete findings of the Global Football Monitor are available on: www.globalfootballmonitor.com.

Read the country-by-country results of the survey GFM2010 - The Results.

*www.Footballunited.com is a fan media and fan-based community, completely dedicated to football. The site is not just a portal to some of the most interesting fan blogs from around the world, it also aims to be a very lively community where football fans from across the world can share ideas, visions and team banter.