football | Media Culpa

McDonald’s tweets to Luis Suarez: bite a Big Mac instead

Uruguay striker Luis Suarez is a controversial football player to say the least. His history of scandals on the pitch is lengthy and another chapter was added today during the FIFA World Cup 2014 in Brazil.

During the game against Italy, Suarez suddenly bit Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini in the shoulder. This was the third time he bit someone during a game as he had previously bit PSV Eindhoven’s Otman Bakkal and also Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic. Both times he got lengthy bans.

Suarez was immediately mocked on Twitter by football fans. And as often happens these days, brands also try to seize the moment and piggy back on trending events. McDonald’s Uruguay tweeted the following tweet tonight:

The tweet reads in English:

“Hi @luis16suarez, if you get hungry come and take a bite from a BigMac;) “

Reactions to the tweet were initially mixed but it quickly got thousands of retweets. What do you think? Genious or tacky?

World Cup 2010: support your team with a Twibbon

On June 11, the FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa will kick off with the game between the host country and Mexico. This will be the first World Cup that will have a significant presence in social media as fans will discuss games and cheer on their teams through channels like Facebook and Twitter.

Here is a collection of “twibbons” that you can add to your Twitter avatar in order to show support for your team, one for each of the 32 participating teams.

Algeria:

Argentina:

Australia:

Brazil:

Cameroon:

Chile:

Denmark:

England:

France:

Germany:

Ghana:

Greece:

Honduras:

Italy:

Ivory Coast:

Japan:

Mexico:

Netherlands:

New Zealand:

Nigeria:

North Korea:

Paraguay:

Portugal:

Serbia:

Slovakia:

Slovenia:

Spain:

South Africa:

South Korea:

Switzerland:

Uruguay:

USA:

FIFA World Cup 2010:

Additional versions of Twibbons can be found at the site via AdHack and ITVfootball.

Swedish footballer banned from blogging

Kalmar FF’s midfielder Viktor Elm has been chosen to play for the Swedish national team. Viktor and his two brothers Rasmus and David are part of the reason why Kalmar currently is the best football team in Sweden. But the trio are not only succesful on the pitch, they also have a very popular blog on the local newspaper Barometern’s site.

However, as the Swedish team meets to prepare for the first FIFA World Cup qualifier against Albania on Saturday, the Swedish team manager Lars Richt tells fotbollskanalen.se that Elm will not be able to blog while he is with the Swedish team.

– That is something that we don’t do when we meet and I will talk to him about it, says Lars Richt, and continues.

– I will talk to him and after that he will surely not blog.

The Elm brothers’ blog caused some commotion after the brothers blogged some negative comments about Henrik Larsson and how media portray him. Still, even if Viktor Elm is quite outspoken on his blog, it does seem that the Swedish national team should lighten up a bit about this command and control attitude towards media and everyone else, for that matter. Football is the sport that interests most Swedes and it wouldn’t be hard to use this commitment to get fans talking and discussing even more about football. A search for football on Twingly.com shows more than 4,000 Swedish blog posts during the last month. I think the Swedish Football Association is crazy not to participate in this discussion. Encourage your fans, let all players have a blog, invite bloggers to press conferences, build a social media press room on your site. There are many things you could do, and if you don’t know how, I can show you.

Tags: fotball, sweden, sport, kalmar, fotboll. Ping.

Swedish football President to blog the Euro 2008

In about 15 minutes the Swedish head coach Lars Lagerbäck will present the team that will travel to the Euro 2008 Football Championships. During the tournament they will be able to read a blog by Lars-Åke Lagrell who is the President of the Swedish Football Association. He will be blogging on the site of one of the sponsors to the national team, Svenska Spel, which is the state-owned gambling company. The ambition is that the blog will be updated each day, but it is not clear whether or not Lagrell will be the only blogger.

Lagrell promises to write about everything from meetings with the UEFA President Michel Platini to activities with the Swedish team.

Tags: euro 2008, soccer, fotboll, em 2008, fotbollsem, landslaget. Ping.

The name of Sweden’s new national football stadium decided

The name of the new Swedish national arena for football will be presented tomorrow at 11.15 in Solna. Anyone who can guess which sponsor who has bought the right to name the stadium? Swedbank maybe…?

The stadium will cost 1.8 billion SEK to build and shall be finished by 2011 at the latest. Photos and info here.

Tags: football, soccer, nationalarenan, fotboll, solna. Ping.

Materazzi profits on Zidane’s headbutt

The bad boy of Italian football, Marco Materazzi, continues to profit on the now legendary headbutt by Zinedine Zidane in the 2006 World Cup final. The fabulous Nike commercial where Materazzi stops just about anything that bangs against his chest, has been watched almost 250,000 times on YouTube. That commercial is also followed by a superb series of Nike ads with the Italian World Champions, found here.

The copy text supposedly is translated “Materazzi Cupboards. World leading solidity tested for headbutts.”