There’s a joke doing the rounds just now that’s worth telling here. It goes like this: What have Scottish football clubs and David Cameron’s Coalition Government got in common? The answer, of course, is that they’re both out of Europe this side of Christmas.
The impact of Twitter as a whole cannot be understated. The social networking phenomenon currently has over 170 million users and reportedly sees over 250 million tweets per day. The world seems to have embraced Twitter and it would be naïve to think that Football was behind on this trend. Far from it in fact.
There is a series of well conceived and well received scientific research that links reduction in effort with external rewards. In 1991, a scientific study demonstrated that if they are of great enough value, external rewards can supersede any pre-existing internal reward.
Christmas may be just around the corner, but there’s been little festive cheer surrounding Scottish football of late. The headlines have been dominated over the last week or so by what is referred to these days as simulation – we traditionalists still prefer to call it diving, of course.
On Tuesday evening I was present amongst the away fans at the Karaiskakis Stadium to witness Olympiakos versus Arsenal in the Champions League. Although the result wasn’t to end up matching my expectations, the experience as a whole was to more than make up for the disappointment.