An amazing match report of Brazil’s friendly game against France yesterday, over on the Football In France Is Rubbish blog. It’s written entirely without using the letter ‘e’, in homage to George Perec’s La Disparition.
Don’t know what they’re putting in the water down at the Nike offices, but whatever it is, it seems to be working.
Cadência is a new film made for the brand by Daren Bartlett, director of the excellent capoeira doc O Zelador. It’s about the rhythm of Brazil, apparently, and visually it looks pretty stunning – thanks in part to some lovely animation by Jiwon Park.
A selection of Park’s stills from the film are being exhibited until the 25th of April at Nike’s new 1948 space (“part retail outlet, part creative playground”), alongside a purpose-made surround-sound installation from dubstep producer ramadanman. Which ought to be awesome.
ramadanman – reclaim
[via FACT}
According to The Guardian, Brazil (and a bunch of other countries) will play this summer’s World Cup in shirts made from 100% recycled material. It may be a bandwagon, but I can’t help feeling that the more huge, trendsetting companies like Nike jump on this bandwagon, the better.
Phenomenal goal from Wolfsburg’s Brazilian striker Grafite. The kind of thing that gives Brazilian football a good name.
I’m in two minds about this video of Manchester United’s Brazilian midfielder Anderson giving his first interview in ‘English’.
Don’t get me wrong: I laughed until I cried the first time I saw it. But you have to give the man known to many fans as Alicia Keys a fair amount of credit for trying. With the honorable (and frankly pretty surprising) exception of David Beckham, when was the last time you saw an English footballer (or politician, for that matter) making any kind of effort to master the local language?
Is it arrogance that makes us assume that speaking loudly and slowly in English will get us by, wherever we go? Are we just being practical? Or is it just to avoid the embarrassment of getting it horribly, horribly wrong? Over to you, Steve McClaren:
