FIFA

sucks. It’s so much about commerce…

Don’t buy their stuff. Buy your soccer balls at e.g. Transfair. These were bought at fair prices and not made by exploiting people in third world regions. Check out the ‘Wilde Fußballkerle’ design. Very sweet. Much better than this annoying worldcup logo just about everywhere.

But back to my original topic. These annoying ‘official’ worldcup songs. Dear FIFA, how about letting people decide which songs they like? I hate your choice… It makes me think of Titanic! And actually I hope that this happens to FIFA, that they go down like titanic because of some corruption scandal or so.

If you want to compare them, check out Voices from the Fifa World Cup at Amazon (with realplayer samples).

My current favourite is 1. FC Sommer, played by the Bananafishbones (last.fm), an indie band. They’re cool. They do a festival and support new indie bands.

If you want to listen to an excerpt, point your browser to the 1. FC Sommer page, there is a realplayer stream available again, klick that audio button.

That song has some great wordplays in there, too bad that you can’t translate them in all details into english. The refrain is “Der Sommer gehört dem, der den Weltmeister schafft” which translates to “The summer belongs to who wins the worldcup”; the world play is “Weltmeister schafft” (becomes the world champion) and “Weltmeisterschaft” (Worldcup). And there is also a nice song by Sportfreunde Stiller, who did a whole CD full of soccer songs.

So just ignore FIFA and don’t buy their branded stuff.