Now that the 2010 World Cup draw has taken place, it is time for the competing nations to release ads promoting their squads. I absolutely love this sort of nationalistic football propaganda and look forward to each nation’s ad campaign.
It seems the Dutch are setting the mark with an ad titled “The Dutch Strike First,” which was released on the day of the draw. For the ad, Nike performed an overnight ‘tape attack’ to “rise the orange feeling.” Under the tag-line ‘The Dutch strike first,’ a group used approximately 6,000 yards of tape to create a huge tournament bracket on the square in the heart of the Amsterdam. The path of the Dutch team is colored orange, all the way from the group stage to the cup. To ‘reserve’ the World Cup for Holland, they wrote ‘bezet’ next to the scheme, which means ‘occupied’, or ‘taken’.
10Shirt was one of the first sites to introduce the world the Jabulani, Adidas’ new ball for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Now we present to you two videos from Adidas on how the ball was created, constructed, and how much effort went into perfecting this ball’s flight. The first video also includes appearances by Karim Benzema and Michael Ballack, two stars who hope to have strong appearances in next summer’s tournament.
This video shows how the ball is manufactured from start to the center circle.
It’s called Jabulani and it’s here. The name comes from one of the eleven different languages of South Africa called isiZulu. It means “to celebrate”.
The new match ball uses only 8 thermally bonded 3-D panels. What does thermally bonded mean? No stitching, the panels are fused together. Adidas claims that this set up gives the ball an exceptionally stable flight.
Also the ball has 11 colors, which seems kind of tacky to me, meant to reflect 11 players in every team, the 11 official languages of South Africa and the 11 South African communities.
This is one of the first looks I have seen so far at how TV producers are going to try and play up South Africa in 2010. This is from TV2 Norway. I wish US television would have the balls to go with something this calm and tranquil. Not a single image of a football player. Just a gorgeous HD piece of video capturing the host nation beautifully.
Way to keep it ultra preppy like an all boys school. Wouldn’t want to rock the boat at all here would ya? If your kits are supposed to make a statement of how you wish to portray yourself to the world what are you saying?
“Wanna meet up after arithmetic and go over the syllabus?”
I would single one of you out, but with those haircuts, I’m afraid I can’t tell any of you apart.
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