Yesterday it was announced that Chelsea boss José Mourinho had signed up to be Yahoo’s ‘Global Football Ambassador’ for 2014.  The announcement itself was only moderately interesting…. until digging a bit deeper into it.

In a clever move by Yahoo, as they look to steal back some of the audience that have moved onto other sites/platforms during the last few years., they have brought The Special One into the fans space.

By launching a new Tumblr blog for José it means that he will be giving his insights about the Premier League and World Cup on a platform that is very relevant to a huge number of people.

Suddenly it turns from a normal commercial deal into one that has an interesting twist to it.  In his first post he says

“The reason I have chosen to partner with Yahoo is simple.  I want to connect with millions of football fans around the globe, and teaming up with Yahoo as well as Tumblr lets me reach a huge audience from Brazil to the US to the UK – whether they are in front of their computers or on their smartphones or tablets. I only associate with the best, and this is both an exciting and prestigious opportunity.”

Hopefully his analysis on the blogging platform will be as entertaining as some of his press conferences!  We can only hope that he isn’t overly edited and that he brings his personality to Tumblr.

It’s a good move from Yahoo and one that could see their image start to shift in the minds of football fans.  They tried over the last couple of years with Premier League digital rights, something they did very little with and were more than happy to give up.  

It could also see a new wave of sign ups for Tumblr as they compete with the other big platforms for attention during this massive year for sport.  After working on the initial launch of the adidas football Tumblr account ahead of the European Championships I know that there is a big audience for football content on the platform.  Yahoo are now looking to tap into this.

As with all blogs, the regularity and quality of the content will be the making or breaking of it.  Aside from his opening post about the announcement, he also chats to a reporter about his thoughts on the World Cup in an interesting short video.  So far so good.

You can catch his new blog at http://mourinhoforyahoo.tumblr.com