Football (also called Soccer or Futbol) is the most popular sports in the world, except in United States, where Google is based. So it’s a bit of surprise to see Google teams up with Nike to lauch Joga (link dead), an online community for soccer players and football lovers. Joga promotes “Joga Bonito” — Portuguese for “play beautiful.”

Joga

From Joga website:

Joga is an online community created by Google and Nike for anyone anywhere in the world who shares a love for soccer, the world’s most popular sport. Joga is about getting to know your fellow fans; creating games and clubs; accessing athletes from Nike; and enjoying video clips and photos (you can even upload your own). You can strengthen existing friendships and begin new ones, join a wide variety of professional athletes and soccer communities, and even create your own to discuss soccer, exchange tips on the coolest moves, browse through various pitches worldwide, and plan your next game.

Joga is obviously based on Orkut platform, a Google social networking community. However, currently if you want to join Joga, you will need a Joga invitation.

Among features of Joga includes videos upload, which utilizes Google Video technology and must be soccer related, with video files size limit at 400 MB. As usual, photo album is available with limit of 100 photos. Joga users may create Starting 11, which is their soccer dream team, which can consist of official athletes, friends, or both, and the team will appear on user profile page when other Joga members visit the profile. Joga users may add blog too to express their view on all things football and soccer.

Football lovers can create own community on Joga.com, for athletes, fields, or teams, but it’s not possible to create an “Official community” or “Official athlete” community. These are created by Joga.com and Nike for professional players at Joga.com.