The 2010 World Cup may end up being seen as a great advert for football, or even a great one for South Africa. But it certainly hasn't been a great advert for adverts.
This has been a World Cup where the stellar names have almost entirely failed to shine. Jarringly, this has coincided with an unprecedented slew of personality-driven World Cup adverts, not to mention a great splurging incontinence of glossy mag cover shots.
Put the two together and the gulf between puff and performance has never been more stark.
For the June issue of Vanity Fair , Annie Leibovitz photographed some of the world's starriest players in skimpy briefs, most of whom have exited the tournament in various states of distress.
They include Carlton Cole and Alexandre Pato (not picked), Didier Drogba (broken elbow), Michael Ballack and Gianluigi Buffon (injured), and Cristiano Ronaldo, who has also previously modelled in his underwear for Armani (bafflingly ineffective).
GQ , too, ran self-important World Cup covers featuring chiaroscuro images of Rio Ferdinand (injured), Cesc Fabregas (benched) and Fabio Capello.
Nike's curse?
The curse of Nike's World Cup advert has already been widely noted — the big-budget film features a red carpet grab-bag of A-listers, almost all of whom have flopped: Wayne Rooney (non-scoring disappointment), Franck Ribéry (French team implosion) as well as Ronaldo and Drogba.
Add to this the Pringles hex — its ad starred France's Nicolas Anelka (stormed out in a sulk) and England's Peter Crouch (played just 17 minutes) — and it is hard to avoid a sense that there might well be something going on here.
But what exactly? Is it really the sapping effects of wealth and celebrity? Perry Groves, a league title winner with Arsenal, thinks not.
“The best players, Ronaldo and [Lionel] Messi, most fans and players would say they're worth every penny.
“The top sports people in the world, they're not doing it for the money. The only motivation when you're right at the top is winning.”
But the best are often the victim of being the best. “When [Ronaldo] plays for Portugal, opposition coaches go all out to stop him because there's no one else to worry about,” Groves says.
On a macro level, World Cup superstar fade could simply be a function of a gap between diverging tectonic plates: football is more than ever a team game, demanding a collective approach and superior all-round fitness.
Sensible expectation
Yet, commerce requires star names. And so the potential impact of talented individuals is hyped beyond sensible expectation.
Advertising execs also choose stars with something other than on-field excellence in mind.
“It is about image and popularity, projection of character, as much as form on the pitch,” says Dan Holliday from Not Actual Size, whose clients include Nike and Ray-Ban.
“The fact is that with advertising you're trying to engage people emotionally. That's easier with someone who appears to have a strong character or backstory.”
Thus, even a high-profile failure is still a high-profile something: “Ads and marketing campaigns have lives of their own now.
“So the talk about the Nike ad is, in a strange way, a part of the campaign.”
Call it ad industry revisionism, but six of the top eight teams in World Cup 2010 are entirely absent from high end TV endorsement. And so, in the end, we return to the glorious uncertainty of sport.
The World Cup, where nationality rather than cash determine your talent pool, will always surprise.
Attempts to graft a celebrity order on to its vicissitudes are generally doomed to fail.
And so it is this time around.
The World Cup's lo-fi all-stars:
Róbert Vittek, Slovakia: Craggy, shaven-headed and endorsement deal-free, but currently joint top scorer with four World Cup goals. Plays club football for Ankaragücü, Turkey's 12th best team.
Keisuke Honda, Japan: Unheralded but sublimely skilled playmaker, and the star of Japan's run to the last 16.
Diego Forlán, Uruguay: Wonderful player, wonderful role model (already a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador) and a pretty face to boot, Forlán is still strangely absent from the front rank of global superstars.
Asamoah Gyan, Ghana: Africa's player of the tournament and, at 24, the next continental superstar. Scorer of three World Cup goals, more than A-listers Didier Drogba, Samuel Eto'o and Yakubu Ayegbeni put together.
Mesut Özil, Germany: A poster boy for successful German multiculturalism: the product of Turkish parents, Özil is also a 21-year-old world star in waiting. Largely unknown before the World Cup, but already the latest phenomenon. — © Guardian News and Media 2010
