iPlot

Losing In Style

In the very last minute of extra time, Dominic Adiyiah headed what should have been the winner for Ghana. The ball, without doubt, was going in. But Uruguay striker Luis Suarez got in the way – with both hands: “The best save of the World Cup," he said later, not the hand of God, “the hand of Suarez.”

It was a decision that would keep Uruguay in the World Cup and would change many lives forever. Suarez was sent off and Ghana was given a penalty. The penalty before the penalties, as we know now. When Ghana’s forward Asamoah Gyan was about to take the shot, a whole continent held its breath. Seconds later, the silence in and outside of the stadium was eerie - after he had only hit the crossbar.

It will go into the annals of the World Cup as the crossbar that broke Africa’s heart. The historic weight of the moment was disproportional to the margin of error that tilted the psychological balance in Uruguay’s favor. Ghana had literally been inches away from becoming the first African nation ever to advance to the World Cup semi-finals. But it was not meant to be.

The ensuing penalty-shoot out was nerve-wrecking and heart-wrenching. Gyan himself showed tremendous character when he stepped up again and coolly converted the first of Ghana’s penalty kicks. But two of his team mates failed to score, Ghana eventually lost, and the scenes of inconsolable players as they broke down overwhelmed by a sudden and all-consuming fatigue were hard to stomach. It was – as the ESPN commentator put it – the cruelest tournament exit ever witnessed at a World Cup. Even some neutral spectators shed tears. And how could you not?

In sports as in life, losing is part of the game. Yet football might be the sport with the biggest emotional roller coaster-rides. Because there is so much room for human error (of both referees and players), victory and defeat, drama and tragedy co-exist in close vicinity. No other sport is so unjust and stirs so much controversy. No other sport can shatter dreams and throw a whole nation into mourning within just seconds. There is no other sport with such a fine line between heroism and embarrassment, euphoria and depression.

But there is also no other sport in which losers can win so much respect and compassion. As much as winning in style is admired by football fans, losing in style is an art in and of itself and will guarantee a permanent spot in football’s hall of fame. The most legendary teams all excelled at losing, often in dramatic defeats: FC Barcelona’s bitter loss to arch rivals Real Madrid in the European Cup final 1960, Germany receiving the infamous “Wembley Goal” 1966 against England, the Netherlands losing the World Cup final in 1972 against Germany, Bayern Munich losing by two last-minute goals against Manchester United in the Champions League final 1999, a deflated Brazil losing to France in 1998, and so forth. And at this World Cup: the spirited US against Ghana and now Ghana against Uruguay. The history of soccer would be poorer without these epic battles and the infinite sadness of those who lost them.

Of course this won’t console the Ghanaian players and fans. As Africa’s World Cup dream has come to a harsh end, here’s a reminder of how the passion of this proud team, which produced such entertaining football at this tournament, evoked the hopes and dreams of a whole continent: a poem called "The Soccer Fanatic" by the Ghanaian poet Prince Mensah, from the collection One Ghana One Voice (presented, yes, by the Ghanaian Football Association):

Goal! That is the word we want to hear for here In this sea of deafening cries Our emotions reach their highest altitudes Through good music, good people, good attitudes – Our team must win, no way around that – We need goals, goals, more goals: We must prove that we did not come here to play, We came to conquer, to seize the day, To make victory our mainstay

Goal! I love the sound of that four-letter word, the sod On which our rollercoaster moods play - Our affinity to spectacular goals, The infinity of a good match, The divinity of our soccer-love drive us Into states of consciousness where each kick, Each dribble, each foul, each whistle eat away Away our patience but still our flags sway Whether chances go green or gray

Goal! The euphoria never abates, always lightening The pensive mood, never failing the ears As we expect a pass, a shot, a goal Sudden like bright-afternoon thunder and lightning – As flashes from a thousand cameras capture When the ball crossed the line and kissed the net – The players know that they carry our hopes in each kick, They know their misses make us sick, They know only winning will do the trick

Goal! Love for this game propels the vane of our energies We will not cease now, we will not sing in vain As we scream on top of our lungs, veins drawn on our necks Losing is not an option because too much Has been invested in this, too much life and love - If eleven men can send us to soccer-heaven, We will give them our all, we will stand tall As they kick the ball, as they rise and fall, As they win in the long haul

Brazil Needs You!

After crashing out of the World Cup today, Brazil - as yet another big football nation after Italy, France, and England - will have to reinvent its brand of football and build a new "golden generation" of players.

It might need your help, which is why MinimalsWorld ask: "If you played for Brazil, what would your name be?"

"Frildo" is what we got for frog design. You can guess who "Hartminhosa" is. Or "Ideeta." :)

Nielsen: Brands Score at the World Cup with "Ambush" Marketing

MarketingVox reports some interesting findings of a recent Nielsen study examining the effectiveness of big consumer brands’ World Cup campaigns. According to Nielsen, Nike so far has trumped arch rival Adidas in terms of exposure – although Adidas is an official FIFA World Cup sponsor and Nike isn't. Adidas’ ball, jersey, and in-stadium advertising simply couldn’t compete with the viral power of Nike’s “Write the Future” spot – arguably one of the best sports ads ever made – which has gotten Nike twice as many mentions on English-speaking blogs, forums, and social networks than Adidas has had (also read this great interview with Trevor Edwards, Nike's VP of global brand and category management). The full-length Nike video has enjoyed almost 14 million views on YouTube since the middle of May. Adidas produced its own Star Wars-themed World Cup video featuring David Beckham and attracted more than 2 million viewers since the release last week.

Nike isn't the only brand to successfully “ambush” a World Cup sponsor, as the Nielsen study shows. Carlsberg, a sponsor of the England national team, had almost four times the level of mentions in English-language messages around the tournament than Budweiser, the official World Cup beer sponsor.

The Nielsen study also found that:

- "FIFA partner Coca-Cola had five times the level of association with the World Cup than Pepsi – despite the latter's 'Oh Africa' ad featuring World Cup stars such as Lionel Messi, Thierry Henry, and Kaká which has generated over a million views online.

- Triggered by Twitter retweets in early June to its FIFA YouTube page and its campaign to create the longest 'goal' shout, Visa had 15 times the World Cup association than MasterCard.

- Timing the launch of its 3D TV sets with the opening day of the tournament, FIFA partner Sony’s association levels were seven times higher than those of Panasonic and ten times higher than those of Philips.”

The most effective branding of course is when your consumers do it for you. Lego has been a master at tapping into its community of users for a while, and all they had to do with the World Cup is to activate the football fan in the Lego fan. Want an example? Just watch the hilarious animated Lego recreation of Robert Green’s goalkeeping goof. Or check out this German Legofussball site.

The Germans and the Beautiful Game

What does it say about the World Cup when the most beautiful football is played by the Germans? Is the quality of the competition so low or are the Germans so good? After the 4-0 thumping of the Australians, pundits are heaping praise on the "Mannschaft" and declaring it (somewhat prematurely) to be the favorite for the title. No one really knew what to expect from Joachim Loew’s young side (average age is 24.5), but the Germans are, as former national coach Juergen Klinsmann put it on ABC, “always ready when it matters.” Well, we’ve known all along that the football god is at least half-German, and no one has described the deeply rooted respect for German teams better than Gary Lineker’s famous quip: “Football is when 11 men play against 11 men and Germany wins.”

What was different though about the win on Sunday was the way it was achieved: Granted, the “Socceroos” are by no means a football powerhouse, but still, the German team impressed with its fluidity, sharp combinations, and well-choreographed movements that one may associate more with Barcelona’s elegant style of “total football” than with the “tanks” as British tabloids often ridicule German football players. Or, as Goal.com commented: “Before Germany’s World Cup opener in Durban, coach Joachim Loew must have told his team to paint the town orange. There was something distinctly Dutch about the Germans.”

On the way to work this morning, however, this bus station ad reminded me unequivocally that it will take more than just one beautiful game to overcome the stereotypes...

Being Robert Green

So what do you do when you are Robert Green, the English goalkeeper who fumbled the ball in the most disastrous fashion to allow the US equalizer today? One of my friends called it “the worst goalie mistake in 20 years of professional football,” and it’s hard to argue with that. The twitterverse suspects that Green was paid by BP to make up for the “spill” (in case you didn’t know, there’s nothing more political than soccer), and a US blogger even posted a YouTube video showing her son and his uncle reenacting the goal shortly after the incident.

And an incident it was. It fit perfectly into the series of serious blunders by English goalkeepers – from David Seaman at the 2002 World Cup and Scott Carson in a Euro 2008 qualifier to several recent gaffes by David (“Calamity”) James, England’s current number 2. It also evoked the good old cliché of the goalkeeper as the lonely warrior who can only lose. Goalies are used to brutal scrutiny, for in every game the full extent of their professional reputation is, quite literally, on the line. It comes as no surprise that Oliver Kahn, the “Teutonian” goalie legend, once admitted that “one has to be crazy to become a goalie.” Moritz Volz wrote in the Times, “You basically have to be prepared to stick your head where everyone puts their feet and for that you have either to be pretty brave or completely mental.” Many of the best goalies indeed exhibit a distinct tick. Gabor Kiraly, the Hungarian national goalkeeper, has been wearing the same grey, dirty (and unwashed) sweat pants every game for almost a decade out of superstition. Paraguayan goalie Jose Luis Felix Chilavert, now retired, expressed his ability as a frustrated outfield player by insisting on taking all the free kicks and penalties for the clubs that he played for. And Kahn, known as the “angry German,” was notorious for lashing out, often like a karate kicker, at his opponents.

Robert Green didn’t exhibit any of these eccentric traits tonight. He seemed rather mellow, and then, after the pivotal moment, he became the saddest person on earth. He instantly knew that there will be absolutely nothing he can do to keep this one split-second failure from eclipsing the remainder of his professional career. Worse even, he will live the rest of his life in replay mode - a long and inescapable remorse in slow motion. In the innovation arena, we know that failure is part of the process, in fact, a critical ingredient that often propels game-changing ideas. But in soccer? Not so much. A recovery from a torment like Green’s is hard if not impossible, and you have to respect him for keeping his cool, after all, and performing somewhat solidly for the rest of the game (the UK’s Italian coach, Fabio Capello, did the right thing and kept him on the pitch after half-time to avoid completely breaking him after his confidence had been so publicly cracked).

In the end, though, the tragic figures – and they tend to be goalies – are the real protagonists of football. In a game so individualistic and so poetic, winning gets you trophies but not necessarily sympathies. A black-out, a failure in front of millions of spectators reminds us all of our own imperfection, of our being human. We may not all be Lionel Messis, but we’re all Robert Greens.

Oh La La....Louis Vuitton Unveils the FIFA World Cup Trophy Travel Case

“We are very proud to have been chosen by FIFA to create the case in which the world’s ultimate sporting prize will in future travel the globe. This exceptional commission truly honors Louis Vuitton’s 150- year tradition of craftsmanship and savoir-faire. We are also delighted to be part of the great festival of football that the 2010 FIFA World Cup promises to be, and to renew our ties with the host country South Africa, with which we have had for many years a very special relationship,” a spokesperson for Louis Vuitton said.

(via Fashion Magazine)

The Tears of a Wise Winner

"The future will be dark." Pep Guardiola, coach of FC Barcelona, on the eve of winning the FIFA Club World Cup Championship, the 6th title in row in one year, an unprecedented accomplishment for a soccer club

Seen | Unseen

“Everything has symmetry when you just leave it where it is,” mathematician Marcus du Sautoy said in his talk at TEDGlobal in Oxford. Attending a TED conference is as asymmetrical an experience as you can imagine: Nothing is left where it is. The combination of riveting ideas and remarkable people you encounter is purportedly designed to disrupt your balance, routines of thinking, self-esteem, beliefs, values — even your sleep. After TED, you’re no longer congruent with your former self: You have seen things you have not seen before, you feel different, and you have been moved. Things have changed, and you know that only true passions cause real change.

After five days of delving into other people’s passions in Oxford, I felt that it was time to celebrate my own: football, a spectacle that combines archaic competition with sublime pleasure. In his scholarly essay “On the Alleged Dehumanization of the Sports Spectator,” Allan Guttmann describes football matches as cathartic events, “saturnalia-like occasions for the uninhibited.” So, on the first evening after TEDGlobal, I took the Jubilee line to London’s Wembley Stadium to see a rather meaningless preseason game between Tottenham Hotspur and a B-team of Europe’s current champions, FC Barcelona.

I’ve always thought — to paraphrase Pascal — that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not stay in a football stadium. A football arena is my refuge, my cave, my playing field, my “manspace.” After all the elevation, elusion, and enthrallment at TEDGlobal, I was craving a simple point of reference and a naive familiarity that only a football field can offer. Like a good pop song, it provides something archetypal that is immediately and permanently relevant, a way to look at life, a worldview. Football, like all sports, offers clear rules, and thus, comfort in a world of growing ambiguity. It satisfies the unfulfilled stories of our lives waiting to be resolved, catalyzed, and made sense of — by one single elegant sequence of interactions and passes that lead to the eruptive, collective, and yet so private celebration of a goal.

Football is like theater. It condenses all human emotions, all possible developments of a story onto one big stage that lies at the center of our attention for 90 minutes or more. Football gives its players the power to be the “authors of their own ambition,” as Alain de Botton suggested in Oxford, when he spoke about 21st-century career patterns. De Botton heralded tragedy as a more humane way to embrace failure and posited, “Hamlet lost, but he was not a loser.” Football possesses this appreciation for tragedy, too. Hearts will ache. Promises will be broken. Somebody will lose. But losers they will not be.

The football stadium is a space where the boundaries between player and spectator are still defined, but the distance from idea to implementation, the gap between unseen and seen, is negligible. A football game is a train of thought, a breathless stream of consciousness, but it is also the very act of acting itself. What you see is what you get. Football is “the head and hand united,” in the words of Richard Sennett, or better, the head and foot united. It is an accelerated microcosm of innovation, where the idea is the prototype is the product.

Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho once described it as follows: “What I do, always before a game — always, every night and every day — is try and think up things, imagine plays, which no one else will have thought of, and to do so always bearing in mind the particular strengths of each teammate to whom I am passing the ball. When I construct those plays in my mind, I take into account whether one teammate likes to receive the ball at his feet or ahead of him, if he’s good with his head and how he prefers to head the ball, if he’s stronger on his right or his left foot. That’s my job. That is what I do. I imagine the game.”

Players like Ronaldinho or the uniquely gifted Argentine Lionel Messi are artists, and like artists “they set up expectations of symmetry and break them,” as Marcus du Sautoy put it, “[because] in everything, uniformity is undesirable.” Innovation, which is needed to advance on the pitch, is asymmetrical by its very nature. The whole game of football is one big attempt to break symmetry through imagination and beauty.

At Wembley, my gaze traced the distinct white of the chalk marking the sidelines and penalty areas on the field, the calm before the storm, disturbingly quiet. I studied the goals, as they stood there, monolithic and self-absorbed, fully aware of their power to attract and fulfill that one simple desire. I admired their majestic symmetry that is only destroyed when man, goalie, enters the scene.

Below the main stands, I spotted Pep Guardiola, Barcelona’s coach, who had won all possible trophies with his club last season. And I recalled what TEDGlobal speaker Itay Talgam had said in Oxford about great conductors: They create the “conditions for the process to take place.” This is true for great football coaches, too. They simply enjoy watching and letting go — gaining influence as they embrace the loss of control over time and space, as some of the great players have in rare moments.

Spanish author Javier Marías’ story, “In Uncertain Time,” portrays Hungarian football player Szentkuthy, who, in the final minutes of a critical game rallies forward on his own, shakes off two defenders, and overcomes the goalkeeper. All that is then left to do is to slot the ball into the empty net, but even as the whole stadium rises to respond to the goal, he refuses to shoot. Instead, he advances, and stops the ball right on the goal line. Then, as the goalkeeper and the two defenders come running towards him, “Szentkuthy rolled the ball an inch or so forward and then stopped it again once it was over the goal line.” “He had thwarted imminence,” writes Marías, “and it was not so much that he had stopped time as that he had set a mark on it and made it uncertain, as if he were saying, ‘I am the instigator and it will happen when I say it will happen, not when you want it. If it does happen, it is because I have decided that it should.’” Szentkuthy’s action “pointed out the gulf between what is unavoidable and what has not been avoided, between what is still future and what is already past, between ‘might be’ and ‘was,’ a palpable transition which we only rarely witness.”

I was looking at the lush green of the football pitch that still allowed all possible mathematical configurations, all possible combinations of play. Seeing the unseen, I thought, means the ability to create multiple stories. Like dancers, football players interpret space, each in his own way. Everything is possible because anything is possible. Just as life, unfolding, is inevitable, so it goes with the referee’s first whistle: “It ain’t why, why, why, it just is” (Van Morrison). It simply happens — and afterwards, legions of commentators and analysts will attempt to reconstruct it, explain it, and demystify it, in vain.

As the teams entered the arena, 60,000 fans began chanting. The players occupied their positions — both teams lined up in a 4-4-2 formation, in perfect symmetry, anxious for the action to come. How I wished I could have held this moment of uncertainty a little longer, as Szentkuthy did when he stopped the ball on the goal line. I was thinking of my soon-to-be-born daughter and how her life and mine will be immediately and forever asymmetrical from the very minute she enters the world. I was thinking of the endless array of possibilities ahead of her.

Then the game began. I’d seen the substance of things not seen. Nothing would ever be the same again.

From the upcoming special TEDGlobal design mind issue "The Substance of Things Not Seen," available next week

“More Than a Club” or What Brands Can Learn from “Barca”

I’m nervous, seriously nervous. In a few hours, in the Olympic stadium in Rome, FC Barcelona (or “Barca,” as its supporters call it) will face Manchester United, the other soccer superpower, in the game of all games, the final of the UEFA Champions League, the most important club competition in Europe (and the world, for that matter). Both teams have already won two trophies this season (their national leagues and national cups respectively), and a victory in Rome would see either one clinch the “treble.” For Barca, it would be a historic accomplishment – no other Spanish soccer team has ever won all three possible titles in one season. That’s not the only superlative in the lead-up to the game: Messi, Eto'o, and Henry – Barca’s offensive trio – have scored more goals together this year than the entire squad of any other European club.

I’ll be watching the game at a resort near Santa Barbara, and it’ll be the end of journey for me, in many ways: I have been following Barca’s triumphant season leading to today’s final  in different cities all over the world on TV. I saw the team struggle against Lyon in an earlier round in a packed sports bar in Amsterdam; I bit my nails in a smelly pub in Austin when Barca remained goalless in the home tie against Chelsea; I took a day off from work in San Francisco to enjoy them trashing Bayern Munich 4-1; I was in Barcelona in a bar without any Euros but a kind bartender (the comfort of strangers) who even accepted a few lousy dollars for a beer that helped me make it through a dramatic away game; I followed games on the Internet live-ticker in Sonoma County in lack of TV; and I celebrated euphorically the decisive 1-1 goal in Chelsea in the semi-final with my best friend in Hamburg. After all these memorable moments, I realize that I am emotionally exhausted. There’s just enough sentiment left for today’s game. I will use it to cheer Barca to victory.

So I am a Barca fan, but you may wonder why in the world would an otherwise level-headed (I hope) German professional, living in San Francisco, be so crazy about a Catalan soccer team? Joan Laporta, FC Barcelona’s president, asked me exactly that question (more diplomatically phrased) when I met him briefly two years ago at an event at Stanford University, and I uttered something like “because Barca is more than a club.” I felt stupid and exposed as succumbing to the marketing formula the club had promoted for years: “Mes que un club.” But then I thought of that one remarkable moment in Bill Maher’s documentary “Religulous” in which he tries to make fun of the actor who plays Jesus in a Christian theme park in Florida. Not a difficult task, it seems, until that very actor asks him back, with great sincerity and earnestness: “So you think this is all made up and crazy talk. I get it. But what if you're wrong?” There’s a short pause, and Maher, the cynic, has just been disarmed. That’s exactly how I feel about my passion for Barca. Not that Barca is like a religion to me, but it is a matter of faith. It is something to believe in – the why doesn’t matter.

And yet, I could cite very good reasons for why Barca ought to be the favorite club of anyone who loves the “beautiful game.” In fact, Albert Schweitzer must have had Barca in mind when he coined his famous aphorism: “Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.” Much has been written about Barca’s aesthical  play and its underlying philosophy. Barca’s style is a showcase of sparkling creativity, but what one must not overlook is the enormous tactical discipline and the intelligent organization that serve as the platform for the magic moments of Messi, Eto’o, Henry et al. The Barca superstars wouldn’t be able to shine without the works of Xavi, Iniesta, and Toure in midfield, and what pundits have rightly dubbed an “efficient ballet” is a collective movement of great fluidity and elegance, and a unique series of human-ball, human-human interactions that are a true pleasure to watch. One must also credit the incredible discipline that coach and former Barca player Pep Guardiola has introduced to the club this year. When a few players showed up one(!) minute late to a training session last week after winning the Spanish cup the night before, Guardiola reprimanded them and fined them – a symbolic act, of course, but one that reinforced the high standards of professionalism.

One of the other key elements of Barca’s supremacy is anticipation – the ability to predict the opponents’ moves and be just one crucial tick faster than them. This ability is based on the philosophy of “Total Football” that the Dutchmen Johann Cruyff and Luis van Gaal brought to Barcelona, and that Barca still cherishes. Total Football requires every player on the pitch to master any position at any time and to “read” the whole game from any angle. In this fluid system no player is fixed in their intended outfield role; anyone can be successively an attacker, a midfielder, and a defender. Total Football depends largely on the adaptability of each footballer within the team to succeed.

Barcelona embodies Total Football and is yet so much more than just football. To learn more about the genuine element of drama that no other club embraces in the way Barca does, I recommend you read Javier Marias' “All Our Past Battles,” a wonderful collection of stories around the “el classicos” between Barca and arch rival Real Madrid. You’ll understand the melodramatic quality of Barca’s defeats (and wins!), and the great poetry that surrounds all of its appearances, on the pitch and off. More than just once, Barca squandered opportunities to close in on a victory that was thought secure because the team’s abundantly talented players gave in to a seemingly insatiable quest for inspiration, artistry, and class rather than scoring a simple goal. The simple way is never the easiest for Barca. Barca’s striving for excellence feels nostalgic but at the same time very relevant and timely.

Franklin Foer also dedicates a whole chapter to the “Blaugrana” (Catalan for blue/red) club and its political undercurrents in his excellent “How Soccer Explains the World.” FC Barcelona was one of the first soccer clubs to be founded in Spain, and it became a haven for Catalan sentiment when Catalan self-government and culture were proscribed during Franco’s dictatorship. The club emerged as the playful manifesto of Catalonia’s spiritual independence, and since then, nowhere has soccer been more fundamental to the sense of identity than in Barcelona. Former Barca full back Oleguer even published a book which was about politics as much as his own career. Barca supporters joke that he only played when he was not on a protest march.

It is ironic that a club rooted deeply in Catalan nationalism has such an international following. But Barca’s appeal is so global precisely because its roots are so local. Barca represents the Catalan people while at the same time creating a sense of \belonging to “beauty and quality.” The meaning of Barca transcends the boundaries of sports and nations, and embodies the universal values of sportsmanship and integrity.

Every brand can take a page from Barca’s “magic ingredients”:

Aspiration: Barca has always set itself and its members daunting challenges to strive for and rally around. The latest one is “The Great Challenge” campaign which aims at growing the membership, fostering Barca as the biggest and greatest club in world soccer. Before the beginning of this season Barca also declared that its goal was to win all three competitions it participated in. Some may call this arrogance, but for Barca it's a brand driver. The “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” set by excellent teams always need to exceed the past ones. Motivation originates in the belief and opportunity to achieve the extraordinary – no matter what it takes. Under-promise and over-deliver is just good execution. Over-promise and over-deliver are the signs of a class act.

Only the best: Barca’s management and members are never satisfied with average, and they despise mediocrity. They understand top quality, tactically advanced soccer as a moral obligation. Only the best players make it to Barca where the competition is brutal. Analogous to GE's famous 10% rule, the lowest performing players in the team usually have to leave the club.

Social responsibility: Barca is fully owned by its members, unlike most other big soccer clubs - which are either in the hands of  large corporations or American (Manchester United) and Russian (FC Chelsea) billionaires - and they possess significant voting power. This “power to the people” tradition reflects a distinct social conscience that is expressed in many ways. Sure, other clubs are using the power of their brands as well to do good, but no other club’s social responsibility is so deeply engrained in its DNA as Barca’s. Based on its spirit of independence, the club has always taken on broader social issues and played a pivotal role in promoting diversity, tolerance, and peace worldwide. Barca’s partnership with UNICEF is a statement of the club's continuing efforts to be at the forefront of solidarity projects with a global reach. Under the agreement, which bears the slogan “Barcelona, more than a club, a new global hope for vulnerable children,” Barca contributes to the financing of UNICEF humanitarian projects and endorses UNICEF on its shirts – as the only major European team not to wear an advertisement. Club president Joan Laporta rules out any type of commercial shirt sponsorship and  instead seeks to promote a humanitarian message: "FC Barcelona is not only a football club, but a club with a soul.”

The real thing: To a European soccer fan living in the US who has grown accustomed to hyper-commercialized sports events, it is reassuring to see how purist the soccer experience still is in Barca’s stadium, the Camp Nou – a few pre-game commercials, no half-time show whatsoever, and all attention on the players, even during their warm-up exercises before the game. In Camp Nou, it is all about the “beautiful game.”

Charismatic reference point: Messi, arguably the world's best soccer player, serves as a reference point for team mates and fans alike. There is no one else like him, and he outshines all other soccer superstars with his playfulness.

Disruption: Powerful brands need an element of surprise. They should always take the freedom to ignore the quest for consistency and do what they want - irrationally, passionately, and with no regrets. Every three years or so, when a cycle ends, Barca’s management disrupts the existing team structure and builds a new squad. The rule is: Always change a winning team! By all standards of modern business, Barca is a professionally managed club but yet there is a sense that anything could happen anytime – almost like in a soccer match.

The Champions League final today will be another milestone in the saga of the Barca brand, regardless of who wins (2-1 for Barca, my prediction). Humility and hard work have been the traits of Barca's season so far, and in the end, dignity will matter more than titles and trophies at a club that is “more than a club.” And that exactly is the hallmark of a great brand: “Keep yourself clean and bright. You are the windows through which you must view the world,” the ancient proverb goes.

Don't Move!?

If you're a frequent reader of this blog, you might have noticed that I'm an avid soccer fan who doesn't let an opportunity pass to draw analogies between the "beautiful game" and the other big game: business. As such I was riveted by Clive Thompson's "Goalkeeper Science" piece in last week's New York Times Magazine's "Year in Ideas" issue. Based on research examining the behavior of soccer goalkeepers facing penalty kicks, Thompson concludes that "inaction may be the biggest form of action" (Jerry Brown).

The study, published by a team of Israeli scientists in the Journal of Economic Psychology earlier this year, analyzed 286 penalty kicks and found that 94 percent of the time the goalies dived to the right or the left, even though the chances of stopping the ball were highest when the goalie stayed in the center. "If that's true, why do goalies almost always dive off to one side?," Thompson wonders and provides the answer himself: "Because () the goalies are afraid of looking as if they're doing nothing and then missing the ball. Diving to one side, even if it decreases the chance of them catching the ball, makes them appear decisive."

At first sight, this finding seems to present an interesting lesson for business leaders who are confronted with the urge to make decisions amidst ambiguity and an overwhelming amount of (often contradictory) information. "Not moving" or sticking to the principles and the plan in place may be interpreted as indecision and thus drive them into an "action bias" that causes more harm than good. Thompson: "The same goes, of course, for presidents and politicians, who face enormous pressure to 'fix' the economy even if they haven't got a clue what to do. Perhaps our current economic crisis has been driven by precisely this dynamic: a global financial system that jumped the wrong way for the ball."

So far, so convincing. But then I read Brian Phillips' rebuttal in which he cites numerous methodological shortcomings to back his claim that the economists' theory may be "more Malcolm Gladwell-ish than originally thought." And that, just to be clear, is not meant as a compliment. Aside from the valid doubt over anything economists, of all people, assert these days (after being so dreadfully wrong on, well, the economy), Malcom Gladwell, the author of the bestselling Tipping Point, Blink, and most recently Outliers, is a delightful master of over-simplification, a populist who masters the art of translating science into a reader's digest franchise of easy "how to's" for business class readers. Not that that is despicable by any means, it may just be wrong. I saw Gladwell present the main thesis of his new book at this year's Pop!Tech conference. I left with the dizzying feeling of a lot of hot air in my stomach and the thought that explaining science via pop may be as dissatisfying as explaining pop via science.

In the case of the goalkeeping study, Phillips contends that "there's some basis for hypothesizing that the aim here is to concoct a metaphor that can be franchised out across a variety of media topics rather than to advance our understanding of soccer or the human mind. Maybe that's too cynical, but that's such a common move in the sciences these days that I thought I'd jump at it, even if I'd be better off staying still." Kudos to Phillips. Action - and no goal!