Follow the World Cup draw on Twitter

Thursday, 5 December 2013

When big sporting events happen in the world, they happen on Twitter — and events do not come much bigger than the FIFA World Cup.

For football fans (or fußball, soccer, or fútbol…), the journey to Brazil 2014 begins in earnest this Friday, December 6 with the FIFA World Cup draw. The draw will select who will meet whom in the group stages of next June’s competition, setting up the matches that will shape next summer’s sporting calendar.

This Friday’s draw takes place in Bahia, Brazil at 2pm (Brazil) / 4pm (GMT) / 5pm (CET) / 12pm EST. As a taste of things to come, FIFA will live-tweet the result. That sets the scene for a tournament that will play out on the pitches of Brazil next summer — and also on Twitter.

Follow the draw
FIFA will live-tweet the draw in six languages, and the individual teams’ Twitter accounts (such as the Australian national team the @Socceroos and England’s @FA) will also be active, along with broadcasters and journalists from all of the 32 countries that have qualified for the tournament.

The official FIFA accounts to follow on Friday are:

FIFA’s secretary-general @JeromeValcke will be overseeing and presenting the draw on Friday, so his is another good account to follow. In the past, he has used his account to break FIFA exclusives. Helping Jerome manage the draw will be Brazilian celebrities Fernanda Lima (@FernandaLimaBah) and Rodrigo Hilbert (@RHilbertOficial), plus one representative from every national team that has previously won the World Cup. You can follow many of the former players, including Geoff Hurst (@TheGeoffHurst), Cafu (@OfficialCafu) and Fabio Cannavaro (@FabioCannavaro).

FIFA has also confirmed the official hashtags for these languages, which will live through the draw to the tournament itself next summer.

Simply search for the hashtag in your language to find fans, media organisations, the teams, FIFA and more all tweeting news and views about the World Cup. Add it to your own Tweets to join the global conversation.

Teams and players
Fans can prepare for the World Cup by following their favourite teams and players on Twitter, sharing their news and updates along the road to Brazil 2014. The most-followed sportsperson on the planet, Cristiano Ronaldo (@Cristiano), plus the Brazilian star Neymar, Jr. (@neymarjr), England’s Wayne Rooney (@WayneRooney) or Spain’s Andre Iniesta (@AndreIniesta8) are all global stars you can follow on Twitter.

Here’s a list of the teams on Twitter; you can use Twitter search to look for player’s Twitter accounts, hit ‘follow’, and keep up to date with their news in the run up to the tournament.

Hear it first, only on Twitter
In the build-up to the World Cup, football fans can expect news about injuries, warm-up games and squad lists to be broken on Twitter, so don’t forget to follow your local broadcasters and journalists on Twitter for the draw on Friday and the World Cup itself.

From this week’s draw to the tournament itself, you can follow all the Brazil 2014 World Cup action on Twitter.

Friday’s draw is just the start. The World Cup starts on Twitter, and it will be the place where fans from around the world will come to experience the roar of the crowd with fellow fans from across the planet.