GOAL SOCIAL SUPERSTARS

It’s no longer just about matchday. Fans crave 24/7 football entertainment; in their pocket, on their screen, and in their ears. And football clubs have listened. The global quality of social media accounts has grown exponentially over the last few years. Daring, socially important, funny, clever, and right on the zeitgeist.

Around the world, our team of journalists and social creators are continually sharing these clubs around the network, highlighting the amazing work of social teams from Brazil to Berlin, Birmingham to Brisbane. 

GOAL Social Superstars 2022 recognises the posts from these clubs that stopped us in our tracks on Tik Tok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and more. The ones that we shared with our friends, family, and now you, the global GOAL fanbase.

Each month, a list of five candidates will be put to the vote. From that. A group winner will emerge who will challenge for the number one spot at the end of the year.

Here are the first five entries…

FLAMENGO MAKES THINGS STRANGER WITH A CULTURE MASHUP 

Who did not talk about Stranger Things in recent weeks? Netflix is back with a new season, with more demons, mystery, and 80s nostalgia. But it's Flamengo, one of the giants of South America, who have turned things upside down by using the Stranger Things aesthetic to announce one of its great signings of recent times: Arturo Vidal. 

WHY WE LOVE THIS 

We've all sent a quality culture x football mashup from an Instagram meme account to our group chat, but to see a club do it themselves is something new. The Rio de Janeiro team put together their own script and played with the parallel realities of the Netflix series.

Instead of Kate Bush's 80s song that broke records on music platforms, the Mengao anthem is heard. Instead of Max or Dustin, you see King Artur with his new colours emerging (for reasons we cannot explain) from a spooky grandfather clock.

It's bizarre, it's a little bit kitsch, but it's 100% better than a standard handshake at the club grounds. More of this please.  

WATFORD DANCE AWAY FROM DISASTER

Getting out of the Championship and into the Premier League is hard. Being promoted to the Premier League after a season of second tier success and then getting whacked home and away every week is even harder.

Getting relegated? The worst. However Watford have taken their status as a yo-yo club and used it to brilliant effect on a timely Tik Tok short.

WHY WE LOVE THIS

Some clubs can get their huge press departments into action, others can command a full media team that would make studios jealous, but some have to go above and beyond. The clip is eight seconds long, but it says everything. It starts with a blaring salsa beat and we are off.

Star player Ismaila Sarr is being consoled under the caption, “getting relegated sad face,” and you are right there with him, with the fans, the emotion of everyone at the club.

But wait! There is no time to be sad. We cut to Sarr dancing in front of a green backdrop. The caption is "winning more games next season, happy face”. The whole thing is genius, it conveys every football feeling in under 10 seconds, and the icing is the cake being the caption of “press F to pay respects.” Meme recognise meme.

VELEZ SARSFIELD GETTIN’ BIZZY WITH IT

Diego Godin signing for Argentinian side Velez Sarsfield in June 2022 was a big coup for the team from the ​​Liniers barrio of Buneos Aires. A contract is one thing, but getting the announcement video right is another.

Enter: Bizarrap, one of Latin America’s biggest music stars, and of course, a big Velez fan.

Featuring Bizarrap playing a brand new track out of the speakers in his studio, the beat gets interrupted by a phonecall confirming Godin is arriving. “Coming? Confirmed? Uh, I’m going crazy!”.

WHY WE LOVE THIS

After winning the Copa Libertadores in 1994, Velez went on to beat Fabio Capello’s iconic Champions League winning AC Milan in the Intercontinental Cup final in Japan later that year.

But despite relative success, they’re certainly not one of Argentina’s biggest clubs in terms of economics, and having a famous fan in Bizarrap to turn up the volume for the arrival of one of the most iconic centre halves of the last 15 years was a huge statement.

It’s silly, fun, and an ingenious way to debut a new beat, too.

AS ROMA PUT THEIR GLOBAL REACH TO GOOD USE

For years, AS Roma have utilised big moments such as transfer reveals to highlight and raise awareness in the search for missing children all around the globe And, when Paolo Dybala signed in the summer of 2022, the contrast between him smiling with his new shirt on the left of the video, and the faces of missing youths on the right, communicated a genuinely powerful message.

WHY WE LOVE THIS

AS Roma has flipped the traditional signing video on its head  their Chief Strategy Officer Paul Rogers instigated the Missing Child campaign in 2019. The Serie A club’s campaign has now helped find 12 missing children since it began, and last year striker Eldor Shomurodov revealed that “It is difficult to explain the happiness of having in some way contributed to the finding of one of these children” after his transfer announcement video helped locate a missing Polish girl. AS Roma’s campaign shows how football has the power to genuinely change lives.

AL-ITTIHAD GO HIEROGLYPHIC PSYCHEDELIC

3D animated tigers roaming around what seems to be a heavily guarded palace close to the Pyramids of Giza? A strange and unnerving, somehow both ancient and modern, hanging television set showing football highlights?

A huge beat drop after the words “THIS IS THE FUTURE” taking us to the middle of a packed-out stadium? Al-Ittihad’s video announcement to mark the signing of Egyptian midfielder Tarek Hamed is a modern masterpiece. Project it onto the Louvre.

WHY WE LOVE THIS

You don’t see much animation in football generally, and when its as psychedelic and just plain weird as this is, it stands out from the crowd even more.

The animation is bizarre, a mash-up between Goldeneye on the N64 and actual hieroglyphics, and the music makes you anxious, excited, and then want to go and have a dance.

Tarek Hamed had played over 200 games for Zamalek prior to this move to Al-Ittihad, and announcing him as a pharoah is a pretty good way to be welcomed to a new club.