Opening Day pages for the soccer World Cup
The first match of the 2010 World Cup is in the history books. South Africa’s team, Bafana Bafana, very nearly pulled off a win over favored Mexico.
It was the first soccer match I’ve sat all the way through since my college days, when I attended games as part of my job with the Winthrop College sports information department. And, if I might say so, Bafana looks like they could have used some help at goalie. Bob Masella, where are you?
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TODAY’S SOUTH AFRICAN PAGE
Today’s opening match was held in Soccer City, a huge arena on the southeast side of Johannesburg, South Africa. This was the front page of today’s Beeld, the leading Afrikaans-language paper in the area (click for a larger view):
The designer who sent it to me — Beeld’s lead A1 designer, Andries Gouws — writes:
The graphic at the bottom shows — amongst other things — the amount of viewers worldwide expected to watch today’s opening ceremony, compared to viewers of the Super Bowl every year and the Rugby World Cup final in 2007.
Yep. And this is what I’ve been writing about: Americans might not care much for soccer. But the worldwide audience for this first match is five times that of the Super Bowl. Five times!
As we reach out for new audiences and new readers, you just can’t ignore the fan base soccer has. I hope my U.S.-based readers are reading this.
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THURSDAY PAGES
In my haste to post my Thursday pages, I neglected to include a few international examples. A small collection of the best of them begins with this wonderfully cropped picture on the front of El Universal of Caracas, Venezuela:
The picture is credited to Themba Hademe of AP.
A number of papers featured celebrations in the streets of South Africa. This one afront O Vale of Sao Jose Dos Campos, Brazil, was shot in Johannesburg by Marcello Casal Jr. of Agencia Brasil:
This next page — from Diena of Riga, Latvia — just knocked me out: What a gorgeous photo:
It’s credited to “ImageForum Leta,” which is an agency. I hope it’s not stock — that would disappoint me greatly.
A couple of papers chose to run illustrations on A1 Thursday. This one by Diário Catarinense of Florianópolis, Brazil, is interesting because it brings in — as a bit of a non-sequitor, unfortunately — the wildlife for which South Africa is so famous:
The illustration is uncredited, as is this next one at the top of Thursday’s National Post of Toronto, Canada:
That one is kind of cool. Here’s a larger look (and click, please, for an even larger one):
The illustration is made up of dozens of tiny little vector figures:
Very cool.
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FRIDAY PAGES
Friday’s pages were much the same, but more of it. Many, many papers led today with the World Cup or associated events. Again, I’ll just show you the most notable.
The vuvuzela horns so popular in South Africa have been on so many front pages this week that they’re in danger of becoming a cliché. This was the most interesting vuvuzela photo I could find today, on the front of Correio Braziliense of Brasilia, Brazil:
The picture is credited to Iano Andrade of D.A. Press.
Many stories today focused on the pride South Africa feels at hosting these matches and the significance the Cup has to the country. Diário Catarinense of Florianópolis, Brazil — the same folks who brought us that wildlife illustration — used a huge photo of kids with painted faces:
The kid in the middle is a fan of South Korea? Really?
The photo is by Jung Yeon of AFP.
One of the more interesting pageantry photos was run — over five columns! — by the Wall Street Journal’s European edition, based in Brussels:
Don’t worry folks, that’s not his hair. That’s a wig/hat. The picture is by the Associated Press.
This gentleman here appeared on a great many front pages today. The Sun of Toronto, Canada, gave the picture by Reuters’ Jerry Lampen the best play of the day:
And Népszabadság of Budapest, Hungary, showed folks partying with — bless their hearts — their local newspaper:
The picture is by Christian Charisius of Reuters.
Last night, an all-star cast of performers opened the Cup with a concert in Soweto. El Universal of Caracus, Venezuela, led today with a big — but uncredited — photo of the show:
Particularly nice is the rail down the right side that details the weekend matches and today’s opening match venue, Soccer City. Apparently, El Universal also includes a special section today.
O Vale of São José dos Campos, Brazil, ran an even larger display of the concert using AP pictures:
Dagens Nyheter of Stockholm, Sweden, created a poster front today with an illustration that emphasized the continent of Africa as well as happy African faces:
The art is credited to Johan Andersson and Stefan Rothmaier.
Público of Lisbon, Portugal, also chose to lead with an illustration today, one that emphasized the worldwide interest in the World Cup:
The Telegraph of Calcutta, India, built its front page around a large ASF detailing talking points about opening day of the Cup:
The downside is that the Telegraph didn’t have a large visual element to pull us into the page — the biggest visual element ends up being the black-and-white picture in the ad at lower right.
The upside is that the ASF is a pretty good read. And that’s always a good thing:
Yesterday, I criticized a photo montage as being difficult on the eyes. I rarely like montages — on page one, at least — but if you must do one, do it like this one by the Star of Toronto, Canada:
The cool thing about this one is that the photos aren’t just from South Africa. These are shots from all over the world — again, emphasizing the global interest in the Cup.
The Globe and Mail – also of Toronto, Canada — took an approach that is more like what I would have pushed for. This is a wonderful photo of the Soccer City stadium on Thursday evening, the eve of the opening match:
What a gorgeous presentation that is. This is my favorite front of the day. The photo is by David Azia of the Associated Press.
From my favorite to the page that puzzled me the most: Can someone please explain this one to me?
Yeah. Sideways. I don’t get it. That’s der Tagesspiegel of Berlin, Germany.
And, when in doubt, just run a big green color block. Right, Mid Day of Mumbai, India?
Cute headline treatment. Nice mug shots. Nice play of colors — even with a large orange ad, there are no clashes here.
But there’s no art!
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SAN MATEO, CALIF.
The other day, Julio Lara of the San Mateo Daily Journal said his tiny 14,800-circulation paper was trying to put out something for the Cup and promised to send me pages.
Julio writes:
As a small newspaper, the members of this staff do wonderful things and wear many hats. Unfortunately, with time constraints, it’s almost impossible to produce eye-catching graphic material.
But this was an chance I couldn’t pass up. I love soccer. I love layout, it’s a perfect combo and I knew I wanted to knock something out for my newspaper.
So I asked to write a column about the World Cup (it’s on the blog) and about three weeks into it, I pitched a ‘pull-out section’ to my sports editor, Nathan Mollat. He’s been happy with my work before so he was in.
Before the paper could commit, however, it had to have advertising support. Julio built ad space into his pitch. The ads didn’t sell as briskly as they would have liked, but the publisher was so delighted with the idea and the way work was progressing that he green-lighted it anyway.
Julio somewhat meekly shipped me pages last night. He’s not so sure the result stacks up well against some of the hugely complex presentations I’ve been posting from huge newspapers.
And I say it does. In fact, given the size of Julio’s paper and the effort that went into this, I’d say it stacks up real damn well indeed.
Here is the cover of the four-page pullout the Daily Journal published today:
The center spread contains the pairings and ASF-like material on players to watch and games you can’t miss (click for a larger view):
Page four concentrated on Team USA, storylines to follow through the Cup and where you can go locally to watch with fans of various national teams:
Yes, this kind of work takes a huge personal effort. It also requires a commitment from editors, publishers and advertisers. It’s very, very easy for us to shy away from things that become gigantic headaches or incredible pains in the ass and simply not try to exceed our grasp.
But that’s not the way outstanding journalism is done. And that laziness is part of what’s killing newspapers.
Exceed your grasp — or, at least, try occasionally. Give yourself a headache or a pain the ass. Pitch a gigantic project — especially if it’s one that you can research or write or design or assemble yourself. This is the kind of entrepreneurial-like spirit that fuels cool work like the Victoria Advocate game board I posted earlier today. And it’s what gave just under 15,000 readers in California a nicely-designed World Cup piece tailored just for them.
Kudos today to San Mateo and Julio Lara and his bosses that were smart enough to say: Sure, good idea. Let’s do it.
Are you doing anything interesting for the World Cup? Send me PDFs, please.
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Mario Garcia posted a few interesting World Cup graphics Thursday. Check them out here.
Previous World Cup coverage, here in the blog:
- Sunday, June 6: Preparing readers for the World’s Cup.
- Monday, June 7: Monday’s World Cup pages.
- Wednesday, June 8: World Cup pages from South Africa.
- Thursday, June 9: Talking soccer graphics with Konstantinos Antonopoulos.
- Thursday, June 9: Tooting horns for the World Cup.