Nike and Puma bid for new Portugal sponsorship deal

Here’s a mini interview (PT) with Figo, on C Ronaldo and his possible moves/tranfers…

http://www.maiseuro2008.iol.pt/noticia.php?id=773186&div_id=1391

Posted from  Netherlands

Luis, you’re trying to get on Martha’s good side with this picture, aren’t you?

(And I think their global management strategy is to let Luis at WorldCupBlog.org give them lots of free publicity.

Posted from  United States

I’ll send them the bill eventually. I’m not greedy. Just 1 or 2 million of the estimated 50 will do.

Posted from  United States

Does that mean if Portugal goes to Puma I have to buy brand new jerseys?

Posted from  United States

Nelson – fear not, I doubt Puma will be able to outbid Nike.

Posted from  United States

Ah, Laurie didn’t lie about the picture — very nice, Luis, thank you.

Also, I know I’m being girly and shallow here, but those Puma jerseys really look fantastic. I say screw Nike!

Posted from  United States

Must admit I’ve found the Puma jerseys awesome, this WC, apart from the “font” type, which was for me quite below the rest of the design… On the other hand, and I also don’t believe Puma will beat Nike, Nike do have that extra thing… An image that wishes to mixture extreme drive and will together with a conservative look. The jerseys haven’t been, by far, as exciting as Puma’s (simultaneously, for me Adidas is basicly Germany and Argentina and the rest is tad ugly) BUT they have that sort of timeless quality and it is true they made a hell of a job with the portuguese jerseys. The darkening of the red/marroon and green, the choice of only one dominant colour, the yellow names and numbers with the shape of a rope, evocative of the “Manuelino” style (just drop by PT and visit the monuments), even the 8 edged cross close to the neck, evocative of the cross of the order of Christ (formerly Templars), still our timeless symbol that you can see in the ships of the discoveries, in the football federation symbol, also the symbol of CF Belenses (PT), etc… Just makes me wonder what would Puma come up with for us, but must say that Nike satisfy my snobish artistic feeling…

Posted from  Netherlands

It seems BR droped to 2nd place, whereas Italy moved up to top of the list (Brazil was 1st for 55 months and Italy wasn’t #1 since November 1993)… PT is still 8th, behind ENG and HOL (?). Spain is back on the top 10, after defeating ENG.

http://www.record.pt/noticia.asp?id=735630&idCanal=44

Posted from  Netherlands

Don’t care about the looks, please! I’ll have to replace my entire collection and that’s such a lot of work because you cannot buy things of real first-class quality outside Portugal. And I’ll get a heart-attack at the airport when leaving Portugal next time because of all the overweight I’ll have to pay for!

Posted from  Austria

Now the same list, WITH other (than Brazil) countries of portuguese oficial language…

http://www.maisfutebol.iol.pt/noticia.php?id=773836&div_id=1194

Didn’t have a clue that S Tome & Principe has actually a football team, BUT in Timor Loro Sae (Eats Timor), Xanana Gusmao is known for being a Benfica fan…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanana_Gusm%C3%A3o

Posted from  Netherlands

São Tomé is at least more peaceful than East Timor. I hate hearing bad news about former Portuguese colonies, why can’t they be as good as Ghana and Ivory Coast (British / French colonies)? The Portuguese definitely weren’t the worst exploiters!

Posted from  Austria

You must realize Portugal was the first colonial empire in Europe but also the last. Some phenomena that are happening now in some of the ex-colonies also happened with others previously, from other countries.

Anyway, I don’t want to start about Angola’s 30 year civil war; nor how/why Indonesia just decided to invade E Timor and kept on killing people for some 20-25 years, while the world just looked to the other side…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Timor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Timor

And here’s the full story…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Empire

http://www.colonialvoyage.com/

S Tome, just like other places, did indeed have a less dramatic story… Fortunatelly…

Posted from  Netherlands

and the ivory coast isnt in that great shape either….weren’t the in a civil war that was stopped during the world cup but started up again after?

and then there was the rwandan genocide in ‘94

all of the european powers and their colonialism messed up Africa/Asia…..one of the darker chapters in Portugal’s history :-/

Posted from  United States

@Louis, Louis my good friend, i know im in no positition to ask for a favour(regarding our history) but could you tell me what is going on with the dutch blog and why i cant post comments there anymore? I try to contact Jan but i cant..please help (ill never bash Portugal anymore)

grtz

Posted from  Netherlands

Dear Nelson,

Although I fully understand where your statement comes from, I cannot agree with the simplistic manner you express it. But sure, colonization had its share of stuff nobody is proud of. And I say this including the sometimes completelly diferent views on what being a “colonising power” meant to Portugal, Spain, England, Holland and France, mainly…

If time, and Luis, allow for a full history discussion in this blog…

I wish to draw the attention to this: Portugal was colonized by kelts, romans, visigoths and arabs, before it gained its independance before the former kingdom of Leon. It all happened too long (100 and something, BC – 1140 and something, AD), but slowly, latin was changed into portuguese, etc, etc, etc…

To be a portuguese today, is to be a mixture of all this. And THIS is the last 2000 years… PLUS all the ones before them…

In the same manner Bhasa Indonesian has plenty of words that derive from portuguese (and Indonesia was never our colony),

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia

a lot of arabic words can still be found in current days portuguese. To this day, by far the biggest influence in our culture is the roman. Our language is still 2000 years old corrupted latin, our law system traces back to the romans and this was a society fully based on slavery, etc…

So you see, everything is relative…

Everybody talks of these issues with a great deal of confidence, as if knowledge was big and absolute trues where there and obvious… Sure, it’s easy to say “colonization is wrong”, nobody will dispute this statement… I won’t…

In our days, we’re quite far from the distant 1415 – when the fight for christianity and desire to go beyond was now about to continue overseas – that’s where it all started

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portugal_in_the_Age_of_Discovery

- against the very people that had last invaded us. Just take note Portugal was born right in the middle of the Reconquista and expanded twice just in the time of the 1st king. By the 5th king we were in Algarve, finally retrieving it back, since 711AD (I think)… All this while maintaining true economic, military and cultural independance from the other kingdoms under the influence of Leon (or Castilla, can’t be sure right now).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algarve

So, if one looks at the political implications, sure colonilization is not from our days and the issue offers little argumentation. Regardless if economically the big potentates are still doing it today with Africa and others are allowed to muscle their way into assimilating other countries – look east, if you didn’t get it.

From a human perspective, there’s no room for arguing, neither. Like so many others, it was another dark page in world history – not fully, but surelly partially.

From an historical perspective, this is forever bound to the fight between Portugal and what would later beacme Spain, for the technological edge. Later with the big powers of Europe. A fight without which, the Americas would not have been found the way they were. A fight without which, globalization as we know it today would simply not be possible. The only comparable deed was, quite honestly, the space race both soviets and americans were involved in, during the 20th century.

It was the 15 century… Notice that less than 100 years before, 1/3 of Europe’s population had been whipped out with the plague, not to mention the 100 years war between France and England, who strongly influenced and defined the political alignment of most of the european countries, Portugal surelly. This actuaslly contributed to the dynastic crisis that eventually placed D Joao I in the throne, and made the aliance with England (treat. Windsor) a fact. This king later married the daughter of John of gaunt and they became the parents of Henry the Navigator.

It were portuguese who took to their hands the discovey and exploration of the shores of Africa, where the world was thought to end. The goal was not the slave market. That started much later (when the money started to get short, before reaching India and finding Brazil, for all these explorations) and was seen as something quite natural, for everybody, at the time. At least, they all did it and fought with us for that…

And it were the portuguese who also brought tea into England and fire weapons to Japan, where the word alcohol still derives from the portuguese word (arkuro/alcool). In Spain, next door, the world was still believed to be flat when Colombus went there, after Lisbon rejected his project of going West in order to find India, at that time – don’t take my word, do what I did – study it! By a funny twist of fate, it was also a portuguese who actually ended up doing what Colombus had proposed – to find a viable route to India through West. It wasn’t, though, commercially viable. Although he did it in service for the Spanish Crown. You might recognize his name Fernao Magalhaes, or its internationl version Magaellan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernao_de_Magalhaes

To the West nothing was known. To South, it was the end of the world, after the known area of the north of Africa. To the far East, only the descriptions of Marco Polo – that were only corrected with the land expeditions the portuguese made.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joao_II

The point I want to make is this: It’s pointless to argue about the dark sides of all colonial empires and none is above reproach. All the slaughtering, etc. But they belong to history. I always see somebody jumping on my throat for beeing portuguese, especially with the colonies stuff. What about England, France, Holland, Belgium,…? But yeah, sure, everybody knows what french, english, dutch, etc did. It just seems that Portugal doesn’t exist for the good things and the whole “discovering of the world thing” was just a spanish flop that became a lucky shot for us, followed by the classical european sharks…

But no… It’s not true at all. I was even asked once by a norwegian “you’re portuguese, what in the hell do you know about wine”? Well, as a portuguese, we’ve been making wine for 2000 years… The latest top10 world ratings placed 2 or 3 portuguese bottles there… Your contry doesn’t even have 200 years… I kept quiet, but it kinda gets annoying… It’s like Portuguese did nothing, when actually, portuguese showed a whole new world to the world… It’s not much. But it’s what we did.

One cannot talk, or judge, colonization with the eyes of today, because it didn’t happen today. Today worse/the same things happen and the world is silent. Probably just like it was then… And I’m not even defending it… I’m just saying to be carefull before talking. I would never make the “norwegian comment”, had I not known the answer…

The “empire” is forever linked to one of the most glorious pages of Portuguese history. Not because we were strong – which we actually weren’t so much (if we had been strong, there would have never been such a thing as the dutch empire, for example, nor would we have been kicked out of Africa and stolen by the english and finally, we would have never fallen into spanish hands for 60 years).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Portuguese_history_(Third_Dynasty)

But because our contribution to world history was, although briefly, quite a big one. For our size, our achievements were quite outstanding and their mark is still quite present in todays world. Portugal has an history of which all portuguese are, and shoud be, proud of. This is NOT saying we support colonization or colonial empires.

So… One must be prudent before stating moral judgements.

OR… We can all go back to footy… Where we all know Portugal is surelly neither an empire nor a former empire…

Posted from  Netherlands

goose – you are free to bash Portugal anytime. I don’t mind the passion, just ask that you do it with some fairness. About the Dutch blog, I don’t think Jan has posted since the comments were turned back on. Any blogs posted during the comment blackout, will not be able to receive comments. I would contact Bob, he should have contact details for the Dutch bloggers. Or he may just create a new post so you can start commenting.

Bob[a]worldcupblog.org

Posted from  United States

Wow..Pedro P. Very nice. As Portuguese, we are all heavily influenced by our colonial legacy. Many of us are doing our best to right a wrong in any way possible. But I will sum up my feelings on the subject this way. Thank goodness we are better at football then we were at colonialism. We may not own the globe right now, but we’ll soon own the global game!

Posted from  United States

I didn’t mean it to be a nationalistic “manifesto”. Every country’s history has good and bad moments. It’s not about owning the globe or being the biggest or the best.

It’s about dotting the “i”s.

You know, in the beggining, there was a lot of fuss in this blog, between who was best: Messi or Roony. Than me and Ceasar L. started the discussion here in the blog, trying to get the public’s attention to a gentleman called Cristiano Ronaldo. Then there was the WC… If PT didn’t reach 4th, you can be sure CR would NOT be CR today, as the world sees him… Probably he’d still play excelent ball, but it wouldn’t matter. Today it seems a pointless discussion, doesn’t it…?

I know it’s not a history blog. You know I also love ball… And I know I wrote too much. BUT, learning is always good…

Posted from  Netherlands

It’s not about how many or how few words, it’s about the “value” add. Learning is always valuable.

Posted from  United States

@Louis, cheers man, really appriciate it..

greetz goose

Posted from  Netherlands

@Carlos:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery

@Luis: It’s more the struggle against not even being recognized as existing… Neither for how long, nor what we’ve done in this world, good and bad.

Posted from  Netherlands

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese-Brazilian

Posted from  Netherlands

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macau#Sixteenth_to_eighteenth_centuries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_distribution_of_Portuguese

Posted from  Netherlands

@BBC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Portuguese_origin

Posted from  Netherlands