Ok. So. It’s poking fun at the personas soccer players take on. So far, so good. We can all understand that. But it’s the laziest poking possible: it’s all just so obvious. This is a multimillion dollar soccer commercial that doesn’t give any indication of knowing a thing about any existing soccer subtexts. The only piece that touches on more than canned aspiration is Rooney’s; at least it gets at the odd tragedy of his class striving and makes a nod to his mysterious tendency to signify as a Bear. But that’s about it. Sure, I suppose I’m use to a high-level of football satire, but the ladies at Kickette could have written a more interesting script in their most champagne-soaked sleep.
The ad fictionalizes a rivalry between Rooney and Ribery for its own purposes (at least as far as I know is doesn’t really exist) while ignoring the much knottier and charged history between Rooney and Ronaldo. Or even between Rooney and Drogba. All the neophytes I quizzed assumed there was established bad blood between Rooney and Ribery from watching the commercial. Perhaps this seems a petty complaint, but I think the false manufacturing of such basic truths immediately took away any relevance from the narrative. All I was left with was Hey. It’s Landon. And Pique. Actually I thought the cameos by the Spanish and American players were the most effective moments: their petty jealousies and smug gloating were believable, human at least.
And despite the aggressive sparkling and millions of cuts, the Nike ad is an essentially static viewing experience. The soccer’s all synthetics and performance, no physicality. They just looked like lumpen versions of their video game selves. The same old penalty moment (done so much better here.) Digital sweat. Yes, back to body fluids. But they matter! They are proof that we are not robots! Or cartoon characters! I tried to determine- was the whole thing meant to function as a critique of advertising itself? Self-parody- was Nike actually trying to make the world's best football players look like nothing more than corporate pawns? (I wondered that too about the Adidas/Star Wars commercial, which i find too nonsensical to even discuss.) It shows football as all about the players’ hopes and dreams and egos: all about their experience. Not about our experience of them. It made me feel like my only part in the game was watching. Frankly, I felt left out.
It’s a sharp contrast to the ecstatic feelings of inclusion that accompany the Puma ad campaign. While yes, it does show traditional fetishized stereotypes of Africa, my glee certainly outweighed my discomfort. It is such an visceral ad: the first time I saw it in late Spring I could feel, taste, hear, smell the World Cup. I felt included in the world, and no sense of separation between the inside and the outside. Football felt alive. It was also a deeply efficient ad: I watched it repeatedly and sent it to everyone I knew. I wanted to buy a pair of Puma shoes and run up and down my block. Despite its seeming indirectness it did its job exquisitely: I was even more excited about the World Cup, and more crucially- I was conscious of Puma’s part in it.
But in the end, the sneaker companies have no say in anything, really. The only controlling factors in football are the limitations of time and space, the presence of luck, and the cooperation of the body. And alas, as we saw with the onslaught of injuries this week, the bodies are refusing to cooperate. Grueling domestic seasons and high-pressure Champions League fixtures have taken their toll: the players are running on empty. As far as I can remember exhaustion has never really been a dialogue in world football. I’m sure this will be the tournament to change that. Schedules will be examined. And by depicting them as cartoon characters, not the tired humans they are, the Nike ad hasn’t cursed the players as much as revealed the curse they live under. It’s been oddly moving to see these extraordinary athletes come up against the limitations of their highly-superior bodies- Drogba’s arm, Rooney’s exhaustion, Ronaldihno’s age and weight- even Ribery’s temptations of the flesh. They are not machines or statues; in many cases they are barely grown men. And as of yet there's no director Nike can hire and no soundtrack they can add that can possibly change the common and unexceptional truth of their players’ mortality.
*This is my favorite football ad of the past year. Short, but elegiac, and expresses so much.
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