Writing about football can be fascinating. Yet, the readers remain a species largely unknown. Using google analytics gives a valuable insight into how many people click in general on any blog post in any given time frame. Additionally, those tools help to see who has shared the content where. The backend at WordPress allows to see figures of how many people have subscribed to rss-feeds and which feedreaders are mostly used. Last but not least, the most popular posts of the last 30 days are displayed. This is all very nice and very helpful. It aides to place the blog and its impact – if there is such a thing for a one man business such as An Old International – in the wider space of the internet and football blogger and writer sphere.

However, as with every creative person, knowing the audience is the best thing that can happen to a football blogger/writer. It was therefore with great pleasure to see Uli Hesse, the German football writer behind the seminal work Tor! The Story of German Football recently admitting that he likes reading An Old International. It was not a long eulogy just a short sentence that brought a lot more pleasure than any other click from an unknown reader elsewhere. For the post in question at least 2 persons spent valuable time of their day to read and more importantly, they wrote a comment and engaged with the piece. Though they only commented on facebook but nonetheless – it’s the effort that counts.

It gives the audience of the blog a human face; it turned a click into a human being.