The World Cup is almost upon us and Nike released a brilliant soccer commercial that debuted during yesterday’s UEFA Champions League Final. It’s called “Write the Future”, and features various players from around the world, writing their own destiny depending on what happens in the World Cup. It’s an epic and often hilarious commercial.

My personal favorite Nike soccer commercial is from Euro 2008, called “Take it to the Next Level”, which shows a soccer player’s career evolve in first person view. (See previously)

Lastly, this soccer commercial from Euro 2004, pokes fun at the Italian national team’s propensity for “diving“. Via Wikipedia:

Diving in the context of association football is an attempt by a player to gain an unfair advantage by diving to the ground and possibly feigning an injury, to appear as if a foul has been committed. Dives are often used to exaggerate the amount of contact present in a challenge.

Image via Getty Images

I love this!

“I think it’s fantastic,” Nash said after Tuesday’s practice. “I think the law is very misguided. I think it’s, unfortunately, to the detriment of our society and our civil liberties. I think it’s very important for us to stand up for things we believe in. As a team and as an organization, we have a lot of love and support for all of our fans. The league is very multicultural. We have players from all over the world, and our Latino community here is very strong and important to us.”

I’d really love to see the San Francisco Giants wear their Los Gigantes jerseys whenever they play in Arizona.

Just saw this brilliant advertisement again. I first noticed it last year, during the Euro Cup. It’s a commercial by Nike, following the career of an unknown teenage soccer player through their eyes. In two minutes, the commercial goes from playing in a youth league, to playing for Arsenal, to playing for Holland in the Euro Cup.

It’s really well done and quite creative!

Recently, the National Basketball Association and Nike teamed up to produce a series of commercials for the NBA playoffs, featuring puppet versions of arguably the best two players in the game: The Lakers’ Kobe Bryant and the Cavaliers’ LeBron James. Two of them in particular are quite amusing to me.

The first commercial features Kobe bragging about the three championship rings that he has won, compared to zero for LeBron.

The second video features LeBron and Kobe challenging each other to a game of 1 on 1.

In LA for a bit and at the happiest place on Earth.