World Cup 2014
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- OSFA0
Donovan was dropped from the US World Cup squad!!??? What the fuck is Klinsmann doing!!!!?????? Fuck!
- it doesn't hurt the US at all. The US is still not expected to do anything at the world cup as usual.VectorMasked
- Touche.OSFA
- Done-o-van.wagshaft
- lodef0
- you know, football, the sport, has nothing to do with this right? It's all due to corruption.OSFA
- right of course. its so much more poignant that these issues are being brought up again in Brazil considering the love for the game there.lodef
- ... the game there. I made a couple brief posts about it on my blog,
http://worldcupdoc.t…
lodef
- Miguex0
Man, is a war zone down there
- kingkong0
Rise as one and live for now: the World Cup of dreadful marketing
Football's quadrennial jamboree is fast approaching and ad agencies across the globe have been working flat out to make sure you know it. But why are World Cup adverts so consistently terrible, asks Andrew Woods
There's a football match on the flatscreen, being played by no one we have ever seen before. The audience are a carefully-selected, well-groomed mix of nationalities and gender. The colours they sport are generic reds and blues. They are watching football in an homogenous showroom flat, the windows of which look down into a market square. It is not clear where this city is, but it's definitely foreign. The friends are careful not to spill their mineral water over the couch when the actor scores. The CGI fans pumps their arms on the TV, and without bothering to watch the end of the game, the friends take to the town in a hatchback. Outside the streets are full of generic football zombies going crazy as our group race around town waving out of the windows. The World Cup marketing teams have pulled off another soul-destroying triumph. All over the world, sat at home, real football fans feel their toes curling as a meaningless slogan flashes onto the screen. “Live/feel/drive/eat the passion/dream!”
Welcome to World Cup marketing hell...
We are in the age of interactivity, sir. That's right, YOU are football. That's right, sir. Because you have a smartphone and are able to send out drunken rants from the pub, you are the most important cog in this machine. Not the TV revenue, the highly-paid players, the multinational sponsors, no, but YOU. YOU (and your money) are the most important elements of the modern game. Especially your money. In fact, your money is the game! And YOU (your money) must 'Live for now' (thanks Pepsi).
Don't just sit at home or in the pub watching the World Cup, but LIVE IT instead. Actually, LIVE the World Cup. 'Write the Future' (thanks Nike) 'Risk Everything' (thanks Nike). Yeah, YOU write the future. BECOME the World Cup. Christ on a popsicle stick. YOU are the most important thing apart from US and WE of course. Budweiser wants you to 'Rise as one', whilst 'All in one rhythm' is the official mantra of this tournament as well as 'Feel the roar' and 'Live the game.' If YOU can decipher any of this, answers in dreamwriting on the back of a metaphysical postcard please #postthepassion.
The problem is that all this 'one love, one world' hogwash has started to penetrate the brains of the fans. Asked by Hyundai to come up with slogans to run along the sides of the various team coaches, an alarming number of suggestions accepted featured this exact brand of mind-druff.
'One nation, one team, one dream!' says the Germany entry, as if from a mid-90s track by Dr Albarn. 'United by TEAM, driven by passion' the Yanks exclaim, with a slogan better befitting a people carrier or a tumble drier. The English slogan is 'The dream of one team, the heartbeat of millions!' (yawn). How about 'OK, the quarter finals will do, just please don't cry like children!' Or the more simple: 'Just don't f*** it up.'
'Arise Sir Wayne!' Nike pronounced in 2010 prior to England's embarrassing capitulation (had Rooney actually 'arisen' his head would have been cleaved clean off). Hyping up English players is never a great idea. Nor are arms outstretched like a St George's Cross, nor the red cross splashed across a grimace in face paint. When Admiral Horatio Nelson rallied the troops during the Battle of Trafalgar, little might he have expected to read a magazine advert years later declaring: 'England expects... A free TV!' (thanks Toshiba - and double points for including in your ad an England fan with arms outstretched like the St George's Cross). It's all so tedious. “Hey guys, it's the World Cup and we are going to put together some kick-ass campaigns, yah!? Tony, can you get the face paints, Sophie can you Google some catchphrases...?” Playing up England as some kind of Games of Thrones tribe would have been fine if the players are equal to it, but they weren't. The most animated they got was playing bingo in flip-flops with Capello. Dragon slaying it wasn't.
When it comes to England, do humour, or some depressing Hovis-style narrative of someone missing out on all the fun whilst struggling up a bloody great hill after finding out that the shop is shut. That's what being an England fan is all about. Finding out that the shop is shut.
The pinnacle of footballer acting was the post-Euro ’96 triumph from Pizza Hut, featuring Italia 90 penalty-squanderers Chris Waddle and Stuart Pearce. “Fancy some deep-paaan pizza?” asks Psycho with all the nasally finesse of a faulty foghorn. It was funny. Watching Messi try and read a newspaper in the 'football-as-community' Pepsi ad however, is painful. The man wows billions on TV with all sorts of tomfoolery and yet a mute appearance trying to read a newspaper (maybe it's his first time) turns him into mahogany, shortly before 'the people' take to the streets again with their giant flags and generic t-shirts. Footballers are better off keeping their traps shut, especially if they're going to turn to camera and declare 'Feel/live/taste the dream/passion...'
The flicks and trips and CGI that now makes computer games the starting point for live action is becoming tedious. Avengers-style orgies of players sponsored by the same footwear firm all playing in their respective team kits makes absolutely no sense. Is it Gladiator? Is it 300? No, it's 100pc fatuous. It's as emotionally engaging as watching a Hulk movie (who, incidentally, appears in a Nike ad).
The counterpoint to this is the slightly more acceptable transposition of the mega bucks players to the streets/Sunday league pitches – the finest of which was Nike's Cantona campaign. This however is starting to wear thin too. 'Winner Stays On' says the Nike ad set in a parkland near a rundown estate. Really?
Of course it makes sense for the big commercial players to become the 'official soft drink/booze/cereal bar of the World Cup' and whatever, but who buys a car because there's football on TV? 'The official car of soccer fans' said a poorly-thought-out ad by Volkswagen in 2010 that featured a car on the pitch, during a game, causing a nuisance.
Will you be drawn to Castrol at the filling station during the carnival? After all, Castrol is the official petrol of the 2014 World Cup. Woo-wooh, pump the air! #feedtheengine. What does it actually mean?
There's nothing that irks a fan quite so much as generic football. Fans in bobble hats from opposite sides of the fence mingling freely on a terrace and celebrating goals scored by actors in made-up kits (usually at Loftus Rd): generic football is the ultimate cop-out. Football is distinctive, defined by differences and unique identities. Ads that reduce its variety down to a mythical, unrealistic vanilla-infused hodgepodge make the skin crawl.
The generic fan is purely imagined and is more often than not generically European. We don't really know which country they're from, or why they all own giant blank flags as they march down cobbled alleyways, waving their giant blank flags to piped Euro-house or Latin beats. Nonetheless, this is what car manufacturers and credit card companies hope YOU are. YOU – the passion/heartbeat/soul of the game. Sheesh! #livethepassion
- lodef0
"Now we need to build a country around the stadiums."
- Greedo0
anybody got a decent pdf of the bracket? pretty please.
- OSFA0
Does anyone know who will be streaming the games live? And if there are any providers or apps that I can watch on my phone or iPad?
- oey0
Andrés Iniesta said he doesn't understand why people are protesting...
He said people should be happy instead (that the WC will be in Brasil)...
What an asshole...
- OSFA0
Why?? Because he doesn't know about Brasil's economic state? And all the corruption behind the projects? Brasil's government and private companies are responsible. Not the sport, not the players.
Did you know anything about Brasil 4 months ago? Do you know what's going on in Singapore, Peru, Lagos? Does it make you an asshole?
- oey0
^
Your level of argumentation and discussion are pathetic man...
you don't know shit about me...In the other hand it's practical impossible not to know the problems in Brasil.
He showed signs he knows about those problems in that interview, so, he's not an ignorant to certain facts.I never said the players were responsible.
He sound like a fucking kid in a playground discussion.
Pathetic!And for the record, I know a lot about Brasil.
I will not foment further discussion with you.
Think whatever you want man.
- ernexbcn0
I agree that a country with so many problems shouldn't be hosting an event this big, the public money being poured and stolen is staggering when they have bigger needs.
- CALLES0
world cup hasnt started and we be fighting already? come on ladies
- lodef0
its really sad the sorts of things going on there. street children being murdered by police, social cleansing and people being forced out of their communities. all were going on before the world cup but have intensified in the name of cleaning up the place for all the tourists and media.
- OSFA0
100SFA!!!
