Football Goes Stats Crazy With Bing Visual Search

Being a. English and b. Football Mad, I was intrigued to hear of Bing’s new Premier League Player Visual Search. If you’re into footy, it’s a great way to search for your favourite players and stay in touch with what’s happening through the season. 

Bing offers a huge array of statistics on 446 Premier League players, laid out on the page like those football sticker/baseball card albums you remember from your childhood. Hover over a player, and up pops key stats, including their team, number of goals scored, yellow and red cards, international caps and estimated value. (Did you know that Fernando Torres is the highest valued player in the Premiership, at £30.5m? Me neither, and I’m a Liverpool fan!)

You can filter search results with a single click via the left hand bar, on height, nationality, team and position, as well as sort results based on the criteria I mention above (Wigan’s Gary Caldwell is currently the league’s biggest villain, with 2 sendings off already this season).

At the top of the page, a number of searches are picked out for you to check at a glance – check out who has scored the most goals (Dimitar Berbatov), Most International Caps (it’s the veteral goalkeeper Edwin Van der Sar, with 130), most yellow cards (Salif Diao), Red Cards and even the league’s tallest players (not Peter Crouch, surprisingly but Birmingham City’s Nicola Zigic at 203 cm).

Click on a player, and you’ll be shown relevant web search links as well as images of the player in action. Sadly no video at this point, but you can imagine seeing the weekend’s goals and game highlights dropping in at some point.

Whether you’re a sports fan or not, this is a great example of how Bing’s Visual Search brings relatively dry information to life. Here in the UK, similar Visual Searches are available for London and Edinburgh restaurants, Academy Award winners, World Leaders, US Politicians, UK Prime Ministers, Top iPhone apps, Celebrities, Film Legends and a host more. Check out Bing Visual Search in your country to see what’s available.

But for now, I’m heading back to the Premier League Search to memorise some more stats. You never know when this kind of trivia comes in handy!