Tag: soccer

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: , , , , . Ping.

“5862709402” and other World Cup advertising stunts

The FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany is no doubt big business and we can’t wait to see Sweden kick some serious bu.., I mean footballs. Until then, here are a few interesting stories and marketing stunts from around the globe.

– From Adidas: German keeper Oliver Kahn as a 65 meter long poster over a motorway bridge near Munich. Incredibly cool, if you disregard the fact that Kahn is only second goalie to Jens Lehmann.

– Below: ESPN commercial for its World Cup coverage. Bono says Ivory Coast qualification ends civil war.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qadP1rqLS3g

– What does “5862709402” mean? It’s a number made up of the last two digits the years that Brazil has won the World Cup. Nike sells t-shirts with that number. Read more about the Nike vs Adidas battle here. For the first time Nike sponsors more teams in the World Cup than its rival. See also Joga Bonito.

– Nike Joga3 football vending machine.

– “A voodoo doll with five pins and the national emblems of all your enemy teams. Toilet paper with World Cup trivia. Pork slices emblazoned with a soccer player dribbling down the field.” Germany has gone football mad.

– Business Week: “Officials expect 32 billion cumulative viewers to tune in”. Advertisers are drooling.

Hat tip: Adrants, Agenda Inc. Tags: , , , .

Zlatan and Henke won’t be blogging the World Cup

It looks like the Swedish football team will be subject to a no-blog policy during the World Cup 2006, just like the German team.

– I can’t imagine that there will be other rules than during the last European Championships, Lars Richt of the Swedish Football Association told Aftonbladet.

The Swedish FA implemented a new policy for the last WC in Japan and Korea 2002 that said players could not write columns in newspapers during the tournament. Richt says that blogging will be included in the policy.