nike v adidas

one of the major subtexts at this years world cup is the battle for football supremecy. how is this a subtext? because i'm not talking about about national teams but what company makes the jerseys and supplies the shoes for each national team.

in the last ten years nike has made a real push to dethrone adidas as the premier football company, but their impact hasn't really been noticable until this year's world cup. not only are they sponsoring a large number of teams (brazil, usa, mexico and portugal to name just a few), they are actually trying to win over football fans by making very un-nike commercials. many of the commercials feature only brazillian football players, little or no english and, the most un-nike thing of all, the tagline "joga bonita." joga bonita loosely translates as play beautiful. just imagine, a nike commercial that celebrates the aesthetics of a sporting event rather than pure domination; a nike commercial thats focus is to do it beautifully rather than just do it. too bad most of the nike made uniforms at the world cup look terrible.

while nike may be trying to internationalize it's football commercials, they're still behind adidas. i mean, the jose plus ten commercials are killer. (again, no english.) but their uniforms, while better than the nike uniforms, aren't cutting it.

in fact the only uniforms that really look great are the ones made by puma. those angola uniforms are probably the best of the entire tournament.