Flour Power

If you're expecting some form of analysis that has anything to do with football, this is not the post you are looking for. There are already hundreds of those articles around the web, and a lot of them written by people that know much more about football than I do.

I'll instead present some of the things that made this World Cup special despite not being specific to the sport itself: the buzzing vuvuzela, the most famous fan of the World Cup, two psychic animals and a pornstar's marketing stunt.

The Vuvuzela

The most noticeable thing while watching the games was definitely the incessant noise of the vuvuzela. It was in fact so annoying that, as annoying things tend to do, it originated all kinds of jokes around the Internet: Youtube added the "Vuvuzela button", Hitler complained about it, and the Vuvuzela Radio was born, just to name a few. Soon enough people started coming up with ways to remove the annoying sound, but those without the technical skills to implement them had to endure that buzzing sound through the whole competition, because attempts to ban it from the stadiums failed.

Larissa Riquelme

Don't know who I'm talking about?

What about now?

Larissa Riquelme is a Paraguayan model and actress that rose to fame during this World Cup due to pictures such as the one above. She became the most famous fan of the World Cup, and was named "Girl of the World Cup" by Marca, the largest Spanish sports newspaper. Following her rise to fame, she promised to run naked (wearing only body paint) through the streets of Asunción if Paraguay won the World Cup, or even if they reached the semi-finals by beating Spain. Paraguay ended up losing its match against Spain, but Larissa announced that she will fulfill her promise anyway.

Paul the Octopus and Mani the Parakeet

Paul is an octopus living in a tank in Germany who is used as an oracle to predict football matches, usually international matches where Germany is playing:

During a divination, Paul is presented with two boxes containing food in the form of a mussel, each marked with the flag of a national football team in an upcoming match. He chose the box with the flag of the winning team in four of Germany's six Euro 2008 matches, and in all seven of their matches in the 2010 World Cup.

He also predicted Spain's win over the Netherlands in the final, which makes his predictions 100% (8/8) correct for the 2010 World Cup.

Paul is now retiring from soccer predictions.

Mani is another animal oracle that became famous during this World Cup. This parakeet from Singapore picked the correct winners for all of the quarter-final games, as well as the Spain-Germany semi-final. But he went against Paul in the final, ending his streak of correct predictions.

Bobbi Eden and #teambj

That promise that Larissa Riquelme did? That's nothing compared to Bobbi Eden's. The Dutch pornstar promised to provide oral sex to all her Twitter followers if Holland won the World Cup.

This made her Twitter follower count jump from around 5k to more than 100k in just a few days. Because Holland was defeated in the final, we won't see it happening, but Bobbi promised some consolation prize. It's a pity, I was looking forward to find out how would she be able to do it. Just think about the logistics involved!

The most read Spanish sports newspaper - MARCA - has made available in their website a very impressive calendar for the World Cup 2010.

It's interactive, made in Flash, and allows for a quick view of all the games across 4 dimensions: teams, days, stadiums and groups.

The middle section displays the games, depending on which section the mouse is hovering on. For example, hovering over Portugal (left section, "National Teams") displays the list of games where Portugal is playing (see screenshot above). This will also highlight items in the other sections - the group Portugal is in (bottom section "Groups and Stages"), the stadiums where the team will be playing (right section "Stadiums and Cities") and on which days are the games (top section, "World Cup 2010 Schedule").

It's the best calendar for the World Cup I've seen so far.

(World Cup 2010 interactive calendar)

I knew the Irish were still not over that Thierry Henry (double) handball that helped put Ireland away from World Cup 2010, but I never thought some companies would go as far as using it for marketing purposes. As a supporter of fairness in sports I already wrote about my opinion on the subject, and I'll be joining the "Anyone But France" team for this World Cup. It would be even better if Portugal was the one to beat them. But I digress.

The point of this post is to show that companies are creating campaigns based on France performing badly in the South Africa World Cup. It's not only random people planning a drinking session when France is out, but well-known brands offering incentives to be anti-France. So far I've found 2 such examples.

The electrical retailer Currys has adopted the slogan "When the French lose... the Irish win!" and is offering vouchers of up to €100 to TV buyers, to be redeemed when France leaves the tournament. They even have a cheeky ad to go with it:

A long term investment in France's demise, which might take longer than most people would like.

Pizza Hut is going the route of instant gratification. They'll offer a free pizza for every goal scored against the French. The Facebook page will provide the ordering codes to get one of the 350 pizzas (yes, there's a limit) each time France concedes a goal.

Do you know of any other anti-France World Cup offers? Please share them in the comments.

FIFA and Sony have announced that 25 of the FIFA World Cup 2010 games will be broadcast in 3D.

With a total of seven pairs of Sony's professional HDC cameras on rigs at every match, the action on the pitch will be captured in a stunning 3D quality enabled through its proprietary multi-image processor and 3D Outside Broadcast truck. Sony’s cutting-edge processor, the only one in the market to date, makes an end-to-end workflow possible in the production process and automatically adjusts the depth-of-field to ensure an unprecedented and optimal 3D viewing experience around the world. Starting from the FIFA Confederations Cup last year in South Africa, Sony has been working on enhancing the 3D capturing of fast-moving football action and has since conducted a number of 3D filming trials in Europe.

Only five out of the ten stadiums - Soccer City and Ellis Park in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town and Port Elizabeth - are chosen for the 3D broadcast. Here's a complete list of the games to be broadcast in 3D:

June 11 16:00 RSA-MEX
June 12 16:00 ARG-NGA
June 13 20:30 GER-AUS
June 14 13:30 NED-DEN
June 15 20:30 BRA-PRK
June 16 16:00 ESP-SUI
June 17 13:30 ARG-KOR
June 18 16:00 SVN-USA
June 19 13:30 NED-JPN
June 20 20:30 BRA-CIV
June 21 20:30 ESP-HON
June 22 20:30 NGA-KOR
June 23 20:30 GHA-GER
June 24 16:00 SVK-ITA
June 25 16:00 POR-BRA
June 27 20:30 1st B-2nd A
June 28 16:00 1st E-2nd F
June 28 20:30 1st G-2nd H
July 2 20:30 Quarter-final
July 3 16:00 Quarter-final
July 3 20:30 Quarter-final
July 6 20:30 Semi-final
July 7 20:30 Semi-final
July 10 20:30 3rd place match
July 11 20:30 Final

In addition to this eight matches will be fed live to digital cinemas and selected venues in 3D HD quality around the globe. Swiss-based Aruna Media AG will manage the exclusive 3D cinema and entertainment venue rights for live games in 3D and plans to broadcast to around 26 countries and is in advanced discussions with several major markets.

(via Engadget)

(image from Times Online)

Ahh, what would be of an important football game without some controversy? And to make it even more disgusting, it had to involve, and be in favor of, France…

The Irish team had lost 0-1 at Croke Park and travelled to France in a very difficult position. After 33 minutes at the Stade de France, Robbie Keane got the goal (and qualification equalizer) for Ireland , which they kept until the 90 minutes were over. And then, 14 minutes into extra time, Gallas scored the goal that got France in the World Cup, after an assist from Thierry Henry. Small detail: Henry controlled the ball with his hand. Wait, there’s more. Henry controlled the ball with his hand… twice!

I'm not even going to comment on the game itself, because that's of little importance and there's plenty of sites discussing it. The real issue here is that it was proven again that soccer desperately needs to adopt what today's technology has to offer. It's outrageous that a game of such importance gets decided in a clearly illegal play, one that would be easily detected by watching a replay. And any replay would be enough, as it was so obvious that you could almost see it from the other side of the pitch…

Tennis has Hawk-Eye. Quite a lot of sports use instant-replay to help decide on controversial situations. But football remains in the dark ages, leading to situations like this one over and over again. Maradona’s “God’s Hand” was 23 years ago, I think we should have evolved enough avoid these mistakes…

I’m not blaming Henry, because most players would do the same. Although he’s still a sneaky bastard.

I’m not blaming the referees, because it is possible that they really didn’t see the (did I say it was double?) handball. Although this was France.

But things like these make me sick.

In related news, Portugal got the qualification after defeating Bosnia and Herzegovina by 1 goal in Zenica (aggregate 2-0).

As if World of Warcraft wasn't enough, I got myself dragged into another game that has the potential to waste quite a bit of my very precious time - Fantasy Premier League.

The rules are quite simple. You are given a budget of €100 million to create a team of 15 players (11 + 4 substitutes) from the English Premier League. Every week, each player is awarded points depending on his performance that week. The "manager" with the most points in the end of gameweek 40 is the winner.

As simple as it this may seem, there are a lot of variables at work here, which turn it into quite a complex, and thus intriguing, game. For starters, €100 million may seem like a lot, but after Lampard, Gerrard (the obvious choices), a big gunner and a good defender, it's easy to realise that the remaining euros must be spent carefully. Then there's the matter of looking at the fixtures. Having the poor defender (the one chosen as filler, because the budget was already low) playing against one of the big four is not desirable, just like having the substitute forward/midfielder against a solid defense is not likely to bring any points from goals and assists. Add the injuries, transfers, the variations in players' value and, of course, the unpredictability of football (of the "soccer" kind, because I don't know a lot about the other one), and this Fantasy Premier League promises to be quite fun.

With the help I've been getting from people that know a lot more about this than myself at the FISO forum, here's the team I've built so far:

This will probably still suffer some changes before the season start on Sunday, so any suggestions are welcome.

I'm guessing there will be a lot of talk about this little game at work, and some of it might transpire here to the blog. I apologise in advance to the girls that read it (all 3 of them), as well as to those who happen to stumble upon this...

Apart from that, who wants to start a private league?