With their recent 5-yr deal to wear UNICEF's logo on their shirt Barca show other teams how the game should be played.
From Barcelona website: "for the first time in our more than 107 years of history, our main soccer team will wear an emblem on the front of its shirt. It will not be the brand name of a corporation. It will not be a commercial to promote some kind of business. It will be the logo of "UNICEF". Through UNICEF, we, the people of FC Barcelona, the people of "Barça", are very proud to donate our shirt to the children of the world who are our present, but especially they are our future."
4 comments:
Well that's a good idea. Do you think they can get Man U to follow suit?
I doubt it, but there are a few other teams who might be prepared to do it. I know Athletic Bilbao from Spain also do not have a sponsor for historical reasons. Like Barcelona the Basque Country were, and to a lesser extent are, interested in independence from Spain and for that reason have worn their strip as though it were a national uniform, ie without logo. but the big teams like Man U i guess not. i wish they did though. I spent a while checking out UNICEF's website just because of the publicity the issue has raised. I liked the whole idea because for once money seems to have come second to profit. How often do we see that in the world?
In franklin foer’s How Soccer Explains the World, there’s a chapter about Barca called “how soccer explains the discreet charm of bourgeois nationalism.”
He writes: “Because of this sense of mission, the club makes fantastic gestures to prove its purity, to show that it resides on a higher plane than the base world of commerce. Of all the clubs in the world, only Barcelona has no advertisements covering the front of its jersey. Until 2003, the club refused even to entertain offers to buy this sacred space. When the highest paid players in the world – Maradona, Ronaldo, Rivaldo- demonstrate insufficient enthusiasm for the cause, Barca and its fans turn on them. They send them to another city, despite the many goals they have scored for the team…”Mas que un club” implies superiority. The pious refusal to turn its jersey into a billboard damns the business decisions made by every other club in to stay afloat.”
I don’t care much about football, but I think barca might be my favorite team.
I'd be interested to see what other tidbits he has to say. Sounds good. His fact about Barca being the only team without shirt sponsor however is wrong. And my friends in Bilbao would be very afronted to see him putting Barca above their own beloved footballers. It was the Basques let us not forget who took more punishment from Franco than any other region and while their nationalistic fervour has declined as ETA transfromed from independence course to blatent cold, murderous - it was they before the cataluynas set forth their football team on a mission to reside on a higher plane. They still only let players born in the Basque country play for them, hence their middle table position, Barca on the other hand let anyone from anywhere. Just a side point though. I think Barca became one of my other teams too
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