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Saturday, November 7, 2009

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Was Zinedine Zidane’s Retirement Just a Clever Marketing Ploy?

Posted: 06 Nov 2009 12:22 PM PST

zidane every team needs Some advance warning: This post is going to be mildly critical of Zinedine Zidane. Nothing too harsh, because – as for many people – he was one of my favourite players to watch. The vision, the touch, the roulettes, the shiny bald patch. Loved it. But that’s also the reason I’m about to mildly criticize him. Don’t worry, this will all make sense in a minute.

My disappointment with Zizou is as follows: The man retired from football in July 2006. That’s well over three years ago. Yet despite no longer being a professional footballer, Zinedine Zidane still keeps trying to sell me things, usually things branded with three stripes.

Most recently he’s been fronting the “Every Team Needs…” campaign, which is – no question – an excellent set of ads.

But, aside from the question of whether someone who is no longer a professional footballer should be allowed to tell us which boots to wear (my answer: maybe) I can’t shake the suspicion that Zidane is such a great marketing frontman because we’re all being denied the chance to see him in action.

I know, that sounds a little conspiracy theory-ish. Maybe it is. But hear me out anyway.

My (conspiracy?) theory is that we all still wish Zidane was playing. Vision, touch, roulettes, shiny head, etcetera. We can’t though, because he hung up his boots a few years earlier than he needed to (can you imagine if he’d joined an MLS team instead of retiring in 2006?). As a result of this earlier than (we) wanted retirement, we’re all still desperate for a glimpse of the great man. So, Adidas and Zizou are exploiting our desire to see him back in action and involved with football, by using it to sell us products.

Check out this recent video for an example:

Thousands of Japanese fans poured into a stadium – a stadium! – for the launch of the new Adidas Predator boot. But really they turned up for a glimpse of Zizou in action. I don’t usually watch promo videos (mostly because I can’t afford any new boots) but I still clicked play and sat through it. Because I was hoping to see Zidane in action. Which I did, but only towards the end of the video, after I’d absorbed the three stripe corporate message.