Once FC Barcelona were holdouts against footballing sponsorship. Now they’re jetting off on stereotype-filled adventures with the big-money airline
Time was when you grudgingly admired ads featuring elite footballers in the pay of heavy-hitting sponsors. Remember the one featuring the Brazilian World Cup team ball-juggling through Rio airport? That was 1998. This century has seen the format over-egged to absurdity: Wayne Rooney scattering a wall of techno-Visigoths with a fiery, projectile free kick and so forth. For Qatar Airways’ latest, featuring Barcelona players exclusively, the inanity-ometer has been ratcheted up to 11. To underscore the airline’s boast that it can fly you to various parts of the world, the ad features Barca players jetting off for adventures with notable international stereotypes. So, in Japan, Lionel Messi naturally becomes involved in a martial arts scenario, while in Paris, Gerard Piqué is surrounded by Marcel Marceau-type mime artists playing invisible football. More puzzlingly, in Dallas, Luis Suárez, poncho’d and saddled up, confronts a group of locals whom he, or rather his horse, confounds with a hoofed volley.
This is sad not just because it’s sad but also because once FC Barcelona were holdouts against footballing sponsorship. Their shirts bore only the logo of Unicef. All that changed in 2010 when they accepted this current deal, worth €150m. Still sadder is the Qatar association – the country set to host the 2022 World Cup in domestic-season-destroying November amid suspicions of corruption and staggering loss of life among construction workers. Nike turned Brazil into a team people enjoyed seeing get beaten; could the same happen to Barcelona?
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