Battle of the boots

An interesting battle is emerging at the 2010 World Cup between Adidas and Nike - and it happens everytime a goal is scored.

Adidas are the official ball of the World Cup, a pretty prestigious tag to be. And one that guarantees repeated brand exposure through action replays and close-ups which invariably occur when a player scores a goal during the month long tournament.

There's just one problem - Nike are getting lots of exposure too.

In the first few days of matches so far I've noticed the Nike logo on the boots of the players scoring most of the goals. It's very clear during the slow-motion action replays.

In fact by my unofficial count so far - Nike have had five such golden moments.
1) Tshabalala's goal for host nation South Africa against Mexico.
2) Marquez levels the match for Mexico against South Africa.
3) South Korea finishes off Greece with a Park Ji Sung goal.
4) Clint Dempsey provides a double whammy as his scuffed shot from his Nike boot is somehow fumbled into the net by England goalkeeper Robert Green (double whammy in that there was so much criticism in the media about the flight pattern of the new Adidas ball)
5) Robert Koren scores for Slovenia - and another goalkeeper fumbles the ball.

While Adidas has only had the limelight to themselves on two occasions when Gerrard scored for England (Adidas sponsored player scores with Adidas ball) and this morning's humiliation of Australia by Germany (they scored four times in that game).

I didn't watch the Ghana v Serbia game so I can't comment on that and I've also not included headers (i.e Heinze's effort against Nigeria)in this unofficial rant.

Adidas are official sponsors of the tournament but in a Nielsen study conducted between 7 May to 6 June it was Nike's "Write the Future" campaign which resulted in Nike being linked to the tournament more than any of the official sponsors.

I suppose a slight negative for Nike so far has been England's draw with the USA where Wayne Rooney - the star of Nike's Write The Future campaign - couldn't lead England to a win.

P.S. I know this isn't a really scientific way of looking at things but when it comes to football boots - I reckon there's alot of us out there who buy the boots of our favourite players who score the goals.