Spain now have a star on their shirt. I’m not exaggerating when I say that my limbs were numb and my mouth was dry during yesterday’s World Cup final. I was truly a hot mess. Moving on… It’s now time for all publications to run their World Cup retrospectives, and since we barely qualify as a publication it’s time for ours. Well, mine; nobody else on staff could name a single player from yesterday’s final. But, of course, I’m taking a more technological point of view. Because if there’s anything I excel at, it’s writing about marginally relevant topics right here on CG.
Jabulani
How many of you knew the name of a World Cup ball prior to World Cup 2010? None of you, correct. Now, how many of you are sick of hearing about the Adidas Jabulani? I’m certainly tired of writing about it every other day. Person A hates the ball, Person B loves the ball. Study A says the ball is garbage, Study B says the ball is fine. Lather, rinse, repeat. For World Cup 2012, I’d like to see FIFA return to the ball that Ferenc Puskás used to kick about. PROBLEM SOLVED.
Goal-line technology
Long overdue, but we may have reached the moment where Fifa, world football’s generally incompetent governing body, has finally recognized the necessity of goal-line technology. There’s still probably no chance in Hell that Fifa will adopt video replay anytime soon, which is fine by me. Baby steps and all that. But if the 2014 World Cup doesn’t have goal-line technology, well, that would be very stupid. Maybe Conmebol will use next year’s Copa América to test out a form of goal-line technology.
Apps
There were plenty of Apps to chose from this time around. I used Goal.com’s App quite a bit, but that was only to check the game schedule. ESPN on TV had a knack for showing their broadcast time instead of game start time. I want to tune in when the players are walking down the tunnel, not when Alexi Lalas is pontificating about this or that topic. That said,
Roberto Martínez, Ruud Gullit, and Jürgen Klinsmann did a fine job when I saw them.
ESPN & ESPN3.com
Despite the fact that the games broadcast live on ABC weren’t on ESPN3.com weren’t streamed live, ESPN really outdid itself with ESPN3.com. You have to figure that Disney paid through the nose for the broadcast rights for the World Cup, so it’s good to see the games promoted and shown on TV and on the Internet. Proper ESPN, too, not like ESPN 800 or anything like that. And with actual commentators who know that game! Really, ESPN’s coverage of the World Cup this time around was very, very good. Yeah, the network was a tendency to make EVERY SINGLE SECOND terribly overdramtic, but I think that’s a problem with American broadcasting as a whole.
Paul the psychic octopus
Paul is about as far away from technology as you can get, but I still love the idea of a psychic octopus. The world needs more psychic animals making sports predictions.
BRAND WARS
In the end, the best player of the tournament wasn’t wearing Nike or Adidas, but Puma (though Puma and Adidas share a common lineage). Diego Forlán, a great man, won the Fifa Golden Ball, the award given to the tournament’s best player. (He was also on my fantasy team, so there.) The final came down to an epic battle between Nike (The Netherlands) and Adidas (Spain). Now, I could be wrong, but I don’t think anyone on the Spain team had those fancy Adidas TechFit kits (the tight-fitting kits where you cold see straps on the back.) Does that fact mean anything? Well, no, it was just something I noticed. (Arjen Robben wore a TechFit kit in the Champions League final last May. He lost, of course.) TechFit kits will be used in the upcoming domestic leagues across Europe.
On the whole, I’d have to say that Adidas’ kits looked better than everyone else’s (favorites includes Germany home and away, Mexico away, Argentina home, and France home.) Other standouts were Portugal’s away (Nike) and Holland’s home (Nike; anybody know what font typeface they used?). The color of the Urugauy (Puma) home kit was great, too.
So, that’s it. I now need to find some other way to occupy my time. Well, until the European leagues kick off again.
And how great would it be if the Vuvuzela catches on all over the world? All vuvzela, all the time.
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