Unit1 sports Beyond Beckham
By Malcolm Beith
Nursing a broken foot, Wayne Rooney limped off the football field just 27 minutes into England's Euro 2004 quarter-final against Portugal. His tournament was over, but what a hard game it had been: Rooney had shot four goals and given his team the hope David Beckham had failed to provide. Surely the 18-year-old Rooney was the One, thought the football experts from Birmingham to Bangkok, the golden boy who would replace Beckham as the new face of football. But the hype died down as soon as the question of dollars translated into n. Sure, Rooney is a very good player, declared one commentator, but what could he possibly ll---"potatoes?"
In the Age of Beckham, it takes more than football skills to become a global football icon. A player's ability to ll team shirts, shaving cream and everything has become ever more crucial to a football club's ability to establish itlf as a global brand. At the top of the food chain stands Beckham--the sarong-wearing star who good looks, family-man image and
celebrity status have helped ll everything from Gillette razors in the United States to Meiji Seika chocolates in Japan.
But all good things must come to an end, and the Age of Beckham
is no exception. At 29, Beckham is entering the twilight of his career; the football industry is beginning to contemplate how to fill the void that his decline as a player and eventual retirement will create. Indeed, that question was on the minds of many of the world's club boss and 鳞次栉比的读音marketing executives who attended the annual football trade fair in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in early December 2004. Newcastle 垃圾桶折纸United chairman Freddy Shepherd declared frankly that Manchester United had lost some of its "stardust" since letting Beckham transfer to Real Madrid in 2003. Now the whole industry is worried about losing its brightness.
There is no obvious candidate to fill Beckham's Gucci shoes. Rooney, 19, is too uninspiring off the field; the pug-faced Liverpudlian has only local appeal and lacks a celebrity reputation. The same goes for Real Madrid's Michael Owen, although he's cute
enough to female fans. Other stars, like Manchester United's Portugue passionate Cristiano Ronaldo, Italian Francesco Totti of AS Roma, Argentine wonder boy Javier Saviola of Monaco and Arnal's No. 1 视频教程网武汉三步踩Frenchman Thierry Henry have potential. But their global range is limited by one important factor: "They don't have the English-language feature," says Dominic Malcolm, a sports-economics lecturer 二手车鉴定评估师at the University of Leicester and author of The Future of Football. Speaking English has come to be regarded as a vital ast for any footballer hoping to win over fans from Buenos Aires to Bangkok. It is generally believed that the next Beckham may well have to be English or American, just as most global pop icons are.
The lack of such a figure is leading European club executives and sponsors to concentrate on filling region-specific marketing needs,till和until的区别 particularly in Asia, which is now en as the merchandising gold mine that could help bring Europe's ailing teams out of the red. When Crystal Palace signed Chine stars Fan Zhiyi and Sun Jihai in 1998, the club's products flew off shelves across China, and created instant brand-name recognition. Tottenham enjoyed a similar effect with Japane striker Kazuyuki Toda last
year, as did Parma with Japane star Hidetoshi Nakata, who is now at Fiorentina. "We're eing players signed in Europe becau of the commercial opportunity they open up," says Malcolm. "It enables a football club as a brand to expand into a物流工程专业 market." Consider this: When Chine star Li Tie's Everton plays against Manchester City, where Sun Jihai now plays, an estimated 300 million Chine watch the match (less than 1 million Brits tune in--and that's if Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB choos to broadcast it).
Some critics argue that teams are sacrificing quality in this quest to build international brands. Many of the Asian players transferred to Europe have failed dismally on the field--Toda, for instance, played just four games before being nt back to a Japane club. This prompted Mohammed bin Hammam, the head of the Asian Football Confederation, to accu European clubs of exploiting Asian players as "slaves" for commercial purpos earlier this year, demanding instead that they hire Asians on playing ability alone. Nevertheless, some teams are going out of their way to help rai player quality along with their reputations; Stockport County FC in Britain's Division One plays annual exhibitions in China and offers training scholarships to local players. "Recruiting players h
24节气故事as to be purely about talent," says a former executive of one big-name English club. "If the player has marketing value, it's a bonus--but not the reason. If you do that you start to endanger the integrity of sporting principles."
Perhaps, but the principles have largely died in recent years, as satellite television dragged football from its local, small roots and transformed it into a multibillion-dollar industry that favored branding over ball skills. As the footballing world moves into a new era, desperately eking its new cash cow--or cows--few clubs or sponsors are listening to the old timers. Some still dream of finding the One, perhaps in an American like Washington DC United's 15-year-old Ghanaian born Freddy Adu, who has endorment deals with everyone from Nike to Campbell's soup, and has helped rai attendance at his games this past ason to 50 percent above average. "It may be that the person who rivals Beckham is going to be the person most cloly linked to the American team when it eventually wins the World Cup," speculates Malcolm.
