Kick-off!

Welcome to the kick-off of Total Football, our special World Cup blog!

With the FIFA World Cup in South Africa starting on June 11, we’re launching a group blog devoted to covering the world’s largest sport event through a unique design and innovation lens. Up to the the final on July 11 in Soccer City in Johannesburg (game 64, as the true fans call it – by the way, you can still purchase tickets here), we will leverage our global network for this effort (thus sticking with the global “football” vs. the American “soccer”) and feature perspectives from Asia, Europe, and the US. At least three of our studios are located in countries that can be considered serious contenders for the trophy (Netherlands, Italy, and Germany – no, not the USA! :)).

Some (record-breaking) numbers: The World Cup is the most widely-viewed sporting event in the world. An estimated 715 million people watched the final match of the 2006 World Cup held in Germany. The tournament in South Africa will be broadcast on 376 channels in 214 countries. It is also widely expected to become the first ‘social media’ World Cup. Moreover, it is the first World Cup on African soil. More than 200 nations tried to qualify for the final play-offs (with 32 remaining contenders). 3.4 million tickets have been sold for 64 matches. More stats? See this Fast Company chart.

On Total Football we will write about fan and team cultures, nation-branding, South Africa, (social) media experience, user experience, game theory (yep, the real one), tactics, “soccernomics,” or whatever else we find intriguing about the event. We may also come up with some alternative (re)-design concepts and other visual explorations.

A quick note on the name of our blog: Pioneered by the Dutch team Ajax Amsterdam, Total Football is a multi-disciplinary approach to playing soccer and implies that all players can play in all positions and have comparable levels of fitness, technical ability, and awareness. It is a football philosophy focused on the creation of space on offense and the destruction of space on defense. The result is maximum flexibility, a strong element of surprise, and the ability to exert pressure on any of the opponent's moves, at any time during the game. Besides Ajax Amsterdam, a number of British clubs including Arsenal London and Manchester United have embraced and refined Total Football, and so has FC Barcelona, with its strong tradition of Dutch coaches and players. At the World Cup, the Dutch and the Spanish teams will probably come closest to the Total Football ideal. Here at frog, Total Football is how we understand design and innovation, and how we solve problems: as 60 degree, holistic, collaborative experiences – nimble, constantly in flux, cross-disciplinary, highly adaptive. More on that soon in another post.

8 days!