Goal! is far from the only four- letter word to be heard when a football team takes the lead – with a study revealing fans are more likely to swear when their side is doing well.
Researchers from the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen took to Twitter to find out exactly how supporters express themselves at the beautiful game.
The study, which analysed tweets about English Premier League matches over three weeks, found that more than one in 20 messages contained swearing.
And fans were less likely to use colourful language when something went wrong in a match.
Report co-author Emma Byrne said: “Surprisingly, fans are much more likely, or at least as likely to swear when they’re excited as when they are losing. It’s interesting, because I always thought of that as being something more in common with sports fans in the United States, but apparently it’s a phenomenon with English fans as well.
“And it has wider implications, because many of us have a tendency to swear when we are happier.
“We’ll be really interested to see if people get as excited about the Scottish referendum as they do about football.”
The study also uncovered the extent to which diehards swear about their own team.
Dr Byrne, a casual fan of Liverpool, said fans of the Anfield club were a great example. “Even when they’ve just scored, Liverpool fans always find something to gripe about.”
The research is to be presented on Tuesdayas part of the first International Workshop on Social Multimedia and Storytelling.
David Corney, senior research fellow at RGU’s innovation, design and sustainability (IDEAS) research institute, said the findings had implications for “sentiment mining” – an attempt the gauge attitudes to a product through what customers write on social networks.
He said: “Until now, many sentiment miners had taken the rather naive view that swearing is always a sign of anger or frustration.
“Our research shows that this is not the case – that swearing can also be an intensifier that is used at times of elation or excitement.”
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