Charles Apple

Well, Bafana Bafana — the proud hosts of this year’s World Cup in South Africa — has been eliminated from the event.

This is not entirely unexpected: Even as far back as my trip there in October and November, pundits were speculating that South Africa would become the first host nation in Cup history to not make it out of the opening rounds. And that turned out to be the case.

Despite this, the Afrikaans-language papers with which I worked last year put on a happy face for tomorrow’s front pages.

Here is die Burger of Cape Town, which proclaims:

It is a bittersweet one, but… Bravo, Bafana!

Chief designer Johnn-Grant Munro chose to illustrate the story with a montage of reaction shots from around the stadium. Naturally, the game pictures will run in sports.

And here is tomorrow’s Beeld of Johannesburg:

Beeld’s A1 editor, my friend Andries Gouws, writes:

We went for a positive note in the headline: A proud end — Bafana beats world’s 9th best team.

Across the top is a timeline of big events during the game. Andries writes:

The picture to the left of the masthead refers to the incident after the game in which France’s coach refused to shake hands with Bafana’s coach.

Read more about that here. Andries continues:

The story next to the ad at the bottom: The French team had their bags packed and ready before the game. The plan: To fly back to France immediately afterwards.

Heh. And read more about that here.

Reportedly the French fans even resorted to cheering Bafana Bafana. Those guys have a real mess on their hands.

For the inside, Andries planned something special for the big Greece vs. Argentina game that was played tonight (remember, South Africa is six hours ahead of us here on the East Coast):

Oh, that’s funny. Andries explains:

I wanted to show [celebrated Argentinian coach] Diego Maradona’s expressions at Argentina’s matches. Plus five nice quotes by the man.

The headline: Diego’s Dance.

The main picture was taken at their first match against Nigeria at Ellis Park. All in all: 11 Maradonas are on this “field”.

Click this one for a much larger view:

Also inside tomorrow’s Beeld will be this page Andries sent along:

Andries writes:

The graphic at the bottom of the page is the idea of Albert Weideman, night editor. It shows how the world’s continents are doing, percentage-wise, in the World Cup.

South America is way ahead. Albert got the stats and did the math and we put it on the map that Elsolet [Joubert, one of the artists with whom I worked last year] often uses to great effect in the business pages.

On top: Some fan pics and action shots from the game.

Andries also slipped us the cover of tomorrow’s sports section:

The headline, Andries tells us, says:

Bafana, you make us proud
South Africa is out despite historic win

Many thanks to both Andries and Johnn for sending us the pages.

These two papers are part of the Media24 chain of papers. Thankfully, their main World Cup web site is in English. Find it here.

Now, let’s get caught up on how the rest of the world has been covering the World Cup, shall we? The following pages all come from the fine folks at the Newseum…

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SUNDAY’S FRONT PAGES

Saturday’s first match was a 1-0 win by the Netherlands over Japan.

No Dutch front pages made it to the Newseum Sunday, however. All we have to document the game is Asahi Shimbun of Tokyo:

And, y’know, it’s darned difficult to tell what’s going on in that photo. Perhaps that’s a key moment in the match. I hope it was.

The day’s finale was a 2-1 win by Denmark over Cameroon. Copenhagen’s Politiken chose to lead its front with a very loose crop of what I presume is the winning goal:

That would have made an interesting six-column shot, cropped shorter but wider. The photo is by Finn Frandsen.

The most exciting A1 World Cup work published Sunday was created by Brazilian newspapers, advancing their team’s big match that evening with the Ivory Coast.

A Tarde of Salvador da Bahia went with an illustration…

Wait. Did he just slap that dude?

O Vale of São José dos Campos used a heartbeat motif, laid over a photo by Jonne Roriz:

The artwork itself is credited to Flávio Forner.

A Notícia of Joinville gave us a page I’ll admit is one of my favorites to come out of all Cup coverage so far:

I’m sure that’s been done before — it’s simply too good of an idea. But man, does this visual sing. All except for the headline. It says:

High voltage

Ouch. I’d have urged them to use nailbiter or anxious or nervous or something like that. Those are a little more obvious, perhaps. But it’s never good to mix your metaphors — especially on A1.

The photoillustration is credited to Cleber Gomes.

Which brings us to the final page of the day by Lance of São Paulo. Now we know which Cup team the animal kingdom supports:

The photo is by Ari Ferreira.

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MONDAY’S FRONT PAGES

The opening match Sunday found Paraguay defeating Slovakia 2-0. I could find no papers Monday from Paraguay, but this one — SME from Bratislava, Slovakia — is one of the most somber I’ve seen in a while:

Man, those guys look pathetic. That can’t be good for single-copy sales.

The photo is by SME staffer Vladimír Šimí?ek.

Sunday’s second match was a huge one — a 1-1 draw between New Zealand and a much heavily-favored Italy. In what’s become a common theme of the Cup, the New Zealand Herald celebrated the draw as if it were a win:

The main photo is from the Associated Press.

The Herald gets special bonus points from me for its very snarky commentary — across the bottom of the page — on the faking of injuries by the Italian team. Click this one for a readable version:

Heh. Funny stuff. Especially given the lead art of Monday’s Alto Adige of Bolzano, Italy:

I ran that little headline, just above the photo, through Google Translator, just to see if I’d get something readable. The unedited result:

Italy to the ground: Just like with amateurs

Double-ouch!

Il Piccolo of Trieste led — if you call running a two-column photo “leading” — with another truly confusing action shot.

And Rome’s la Repubblica featured an A1 shot of dejected Italian players after the match:

Well, at least they were walking. As opposed to being carried off on stretcher, y’know?

In the final match of the day, that “high-voltage” nail-biter turned out to be anything but as Brazil put away the Ivory Coast handily, 3-1.

Nearly every Brazilian paper at the Newseum featured a front-page photo of Luis Fabiano, who scored two goals — one of them apparently after touching the ball with his arm and shoulder.

Here is Correio of Salvador, giving huge poster treatment to a photo by Roberto Schmidt of AFP:

Diario de Pernambuco of Recife also gave huge vertical page-one play to a Schmidt picture:

Diário do Pará of Belém played up the score as well as its lead photo:

If I were Diário do Pará, I’d send Nike a bill for that, by the way.

And Lance of Rio de Janerio played up what appears to be the moment in which Fabiano touched the ball with his shoulder.

The headline, according to Google Translator:

In the ‘chest’ and race

Which, I presume, would be something like Bump and run.

That picture is by Antonio Lacerda of EFE.

Notícias do Dia of Tijucas gave nice play to a celebration shot by André Chaco of Fotoarena.

The headline on the front of Fortaleza’s O Povo says Now, Yes!

The picture is by Antonio Scorza of AFP.

Tribuna da Bahia of Salvador built a montage of celebration shots and other bits, all on a yellow tint box:

The main photo is from Folha Press.

Diário Catarinense of Florianópolis went with three photos — from left to right, labeled Brightness, Arm and Fight — to illustrate the main themes of the game.

The photos are by Matt Dunham of the Associated Press. There’s no word on who drew the cartoon page header.

And O Globo of Rio de Janerio led with a picture of Fabiano, pairing it with a shot of a highlight of the match: When Brazil’s Abdelkader Keita was ejected following a particularly egregious — yet, apparently, effective — acting job by an Ivory Coast player.

The lead photo is by Fernando Maia.

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TODAY’S FRONT PAGES

The first game Monday was the first real blowout of this year’s Cup: A 7-0 victory over hapless North Korea by Portgual.

The Portuguese papers played it up, as you’d imagine. Jornal de Notícias of Porto ran a big celebration shot by Reuters’ Oleg Popov:

The headline, I believe, is something along the lines of:

Seven - the perfect number

Público of Lisbon, too, led with a celebration shot — this one by Jewel Samad of AFP:

Diário de Notícias of Madera chose a particularly interesting action shot by Helmut Fohringer of EPA:

The celebrated Portuguese tabloid i ran a frame from that same sequence:

In Monday’s second match, Chile defeated Switzerland 1-0. Here is Las Últimas Noticias of Santiago:

The photo is by Carlos Catalán Zencovich.

Tages Anzeiger of Zurich went with dejected Swiss players walking off the field.

That picture is by Yves Herman of Reuters.

In the day’s finale, Spain defeated Honduras 2-0. Here’s how El País of Madrid played an EFE photo on A1:

Diario de Sevilla of Seville ran a nice horizontal crop of an EFE photo by Achim Scheidemann.

And La Vanguardia of Barcelona, too, went horizontal with a picture by Roberto Schmidt of AFP.

And, here in the U.S., three papers — that I could find via the Newseum — chose to feature the World Cup on page 1A in a significant way today, despite the fact that the next Team USA match isn’t until Wednesday.

Boston’s Metro tab ran a story about folks sloughing off work in order to watch their favorite teams in the Cup:

Hmm. I’m not sure that support of soccer and the Cup in this country would qualify as a “virtual strike.” But hey, if they didn’t overstate the hell out of it, I guess it wouldn’t be a tabloid.

The photo is by Getty’s Gabriel Bouys. The cutline says something about folks around the office changing their makeup. I have no proof on which to base my suspicion, but I have difficulty believing this was a picture shot in an office in the U.S.

The Times of El Paso, Texas, built page topper that looked quite odd to me at first glance:

And then it occurred to me: This was a mashup of two photos. One is a Mexican player; the other is a member of Team USA.

I like the way the composition interacts with the paper’s nameplate and all. But these two guys look as if they’re performing Mel Brooks‘ The Producers out on the pitch.

And the Review-Journal of Las Vegas ran a file photo by Hassan Ammar of the Associated Press with a story about a local member of the U.S. team:

Find the story here by free-lancer Mark Zeigler.

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Are you doing anything interesting for the World Cup? Send me PDFs, please.

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
• Friday, June 10: Opening day pages
• Saturday, June 11: The front page of Saturday’s Johannesburg paper
• Saturday, June 11: The most fun I’ve seen yet on a World Cup page
• Sunday, June 12: U.S. Cup fronts after the tie with England weren’t so gracious
• Wednesday, June 16: More Cup pages from South Africa and around the world
• Friday, June 18: The Mercury of Durban, South Africa, and its stunning “twinning” project
• Saturday, June 19: Advance pages and graphics from South Africa’s Sunday national papers Rapport and City Press
• Saturday, June 19: World Cup pages from Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
• Tuesday, June 22: An international competition in which to enter your World Cup presentations
  

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 5:50 pm and is filed under A look at the day's fronts, International newspapers, Photojournalism, Sports design, World Cup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.