In celebration of this Sunday’s World Cup final, Adfreak has put together 10 best soccer commercials we’ve ever seen. We caught all ten and have embedded five of our favorites below.
Putting Nike’s hugely viral “Write The Future” ad aside, our top pick is Nike Shox, Streaker spot. Unlike other fluffy ads, this spot has successfully communicated the product benefit through the use of humor and entertainment.
Adidas’s Lionel Messi spot is our second, as his struggle to become the best player in the world clearly highlights Adidas’s tagline “Impossible is nothing”. Catch the rest of our favorites below.
5. Carlsberg – “Pub Team”
Description: Most soccer spots celebrate the speed and power of youth. This one headed brilliantly in the opposite direction. It showed a Sunday pub team that happens to include some of England greatest-ever players—Peter Shilton, Des Walker, Bryan Robson, Stuart Pearce, Chris Waddle, Peter Beardsley, Peter Reid, Terry Butcher, Alan Ball, Jack Charlton and Bobby Charlton, with the late Sir Bobby Robson as the manager.
The run-of-the-mill premise—that if Carlsberg ran a pub team, it would be the best in the world—is elevated by the spot’s aging stars, who bring the sport gloriously down to earth by playing, long past their prime, for love of the game.
4. Nike – “Airport
Description: The Brazilian team passes the time in an airport by playing a jubilant pickup game in this spot, directed by John Woo for the 1998 World Cup. Features a comical appearance by Eric Cantona (as the passenger on the airplane) and a brilliant ending, with Ronaldo just falling short of glory. That turned out to be prophetic, as Brazil lost to France in the final that year.
3. Nike – “Take It to the Next Level”
Description: Guy Ritchie directed this manic masterpiece for Euro 2008, in which we get a dizzying first-person view of a young player recruited to play at London club Arsenal and then for the Dutch national team. Includes blood, vomit, the signing of breasts, lots of superstars and some remarkable camerawork that captures the pace and fury of a match at the top level. And, of course, showing all this from the viewer’s perspective literally embodies the fantasy of every young boy in Europe—to rise through the ranks and become a global soccer star.
2. Adidas – Messi (Impossible Is Nothing)
Description: Plenty of athletes have starred in the “Impossible is nothing” campaign. Few have faced the kind of genuine physical obstacles to success that Lionel Messi has. All Messi did was overcome his struggles to become the best player in the world. A triumph of storytelling for Adidas, whose action soccer spots tend to fall short.
1. Nike – Nike Shox Streaker
Description: This Frank Budgen-directed spot remains advertising’s most amusing celebration of the sports world’s free-spirited exhibitionists. (It hardly mattered that it advertised running shoes, not soccer cleats.) Filmed in December 2002 at Millwall’s pitch in London, it starred 32-year-old Mark Bowden in the title role, along with 300 extras. Bowden reportedly distinguished himself during the shoot by screaming with pain in the chilly weather. He later said: “I think I look pretty good in it, actually, but any man will tell you what happens when it’s really cold.”
Description and ads adopted from Adfreak.
