Fifa World Cup

Archive — Fifa World Cup

The England v Colombia World Cup reports you were never meant to see

The Independent provides a peek behind the curtain of football match reporting with a tight deadline. Here are two unused match reports written for completely different outcomes of the England v Colombia match.

It’s interesting how both examples almost completely fizzle out after what is deemed to be the pivotal moment of the match is dealt with:

…a scoreline they saw out comfortably over the rest of the second half.

That was the moment that England lost this game and were knocked out of the World Cup…

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Generative Worldcup Poster 2018

an experiment with world cup statistics API and canvas to generate abstract patterns for each game.

These are beautiful.

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Six Lions

Nick Barlow reflects on the meaning of “football’s coming home”, and the differences between the original version of the song Three Lions and the 1998 version. I enjoyed reading this because I had found myself getting annoyed about the way people were saying “football’s coming home”, completely forgetting that there was a second version with a different meaning.

When Three Lions came out the first time, I was already a fan of the Lightning Seeds, and I think I had been a viewer of Fantasy Football League. I thought Three Lions was a good song. Which it obviously is, because everyone is still singing it 22 years on. So despite being Scottish, I was determined to buy a copy of the single — to my dad’s great disappointment.

I barely remember the 1998 version. As Nick reflects, it seems to be inherently different, and more dislikeable.

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Chinese firms pile in to sponsor World Cup 2018 amid Fifa fallout

As Western firms have begun to desert Fifa due to the corruption scandal, Chinese firms have seized the opportunity to “to get their brands in front of billions of global eyeballs”.

It has been noted that companies are more willing these days to take a stand (see also ABC cancelling a sitcom because its star is racist). But this appears to be a western phenomenon.

Chinese firms seem to have no qualms around being associated with Fifa. Perhaps this is a dimension to keep an eye on as China becomes more and more important on the global stage.

This year’s Fifa World Cup provides a unique opportunity for little-known Chinese companies to get huge amounts of exposure to global consumers.

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