SITE NEWS: We are moving all of our site and company news into a single blog for Sports-Reference.com. We'll tag all PFR content, so you can quickly and easily find the content you want.
Also, our existing PFR blog rss feed will be redirected to the new site's feed.
Pro-Football-Reference.com » Sports Reference
For more from Chase and Jason, check out their work at Football Perspective and The Big Lead.
ShareThisWorld Cup 2010 Checkdowns: Nike Commercial Curse?
Like most people who reviewed Nike's 2010 World Cup "Write the Future" campaign, I really adore the full-length version of the TV spot:
Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, it's a fun, thrilling piece of visual and conceptual art. There's just one problem, though, according to Asher Klein at the NYT's Goal Blog:
"The three-minute-long epic in question ... shows five players in the heat of battle in South Africa imagining how the fans back home will react to their performance. The players are some of soccer’s biggest names: Ivory Coast’s Didier Drogba, Italy’s Fabio Cannavaro, England’s Wayne Rooney, Brazil’s Ronadinho, and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo.
The idea is that these players will put their Nike-made boots to work at the World Cup, and in so doing make a future for themselves (score a goal and you’re immortalized on YouTube, fail to score and you’re trailer trash) and for the Cup-hungry fans watching on TV. Problem is, these players aren’t making headlines, at least not the ones they’d like to make. In fact, they almost seem cursed!"
He goes on to detail the ways the spot's big soccer names -- and even the cameo appearances, like Roger Federer -- have not exactly enjoyed the greatest month of their sporting careers, save for Kobe Bryant. We've dealt with curses before, of course, coming to the conclusion that any group of athletes with high expectations based on past performance will likely fall short in the future. But it's still interesting that a commercial with such a great concept (and execution) would see almost all of its stars struggle since the Cup began.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 8:13 am and is filed under Checkdowns, Voodoo and witchcraft, World Cup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
The England vs France bit was particularly cursed with Theo Walcott (player calling for a pass) not making the squad for the tournament, Franck Ribéry and France finishing last in their group and Wayne Rooney playing terribly in England's first two games.
I just saw that Nike rolled out a new "Write the Future" commercial featuring Robinho... I guess a lot of people pointed out to them that Ronaldinho didn't even make a Seleção.
Cannavaro struggling was utterly predictable: he is the greatest defender I have ever seen play, but it has been apparent for some time that the years have caught up to him and he is not the player he was. I would even argue that his performance back in 2006, excellent as it was, reflected a slight decline from his absolute peak, as typified (for me at least) by his performance for Inter against Shevchenko and AC in the 2003 Champions League semi-final first leg. Anyone who wants to know how to play centre half perfectly should get themselves a tape of that game. But 2006 was really the last gasp for Italy's under-recognised and underachieving golden generation - 2010 was always likely to be a bridge too far.
Ronaldinho is just one in a long line of spectacularly talented Brazilians who have lacked the commitment to make the most of their ability. Certainly no surprise there.
Drogba played very well, once healthyish, for a good team with the misfortune of being in a murderous group in which the other two strong teams played each other last. He's had the highest peak of any pure centre forward I have watched (with the possible exception of Christian Vieri), but the combination of his late blooming, extended periods lost to injuries and/or sulking, and the fact that his national team is not a major footballing power will probably preclude him from being seen as the all-time great he certainly could have been. He's also a slightly odd choice for an ad like this, given how small a part his (not inconsiderable) ball skills are of what makes him dominant, as compared to his pace, strength, movement, aerial dominance and finishing ability - flash and flair are much bigger parts of the games of the other three attacking players in this ad.
Rooney is quite evidently not fully fit after his late-season injury problems. In the Slovenia game, he finally played pretty well, but certainly not at the dominant level of his last domestic campaign. Incomplete grade, at this point.
Ronaldo may not have been scoring, but he certainly played a major part in orchestrating the spectacular demolition of North Korea that all but guaranteed their passage from the "group of death". Goals or no, I think it's tough to argue he's having a poor campaign. I don't suppose Spain's fullbacks are looking forward to facing him, that's for sure.