ZUZU F.C.

Soccer and Football are back. With the MLS picking up after recess and the European Leagues in full swing, it’s time to dive back into the age-old debate: is it soccer or football?

There was a time when these two terms were worlds apart—literally and emotionally. For those outside the U.S., calling it “soccer” always felt like an Americanized way (despite “soccer” being a British term) to refer to the world’s most beloved sport, with a hint of jealousy—almost like refusing to acknowledge that football (soccer) is bigger than American football by giving it a different name altogether.

But today, Americans live and breathe soccer just like any other football-loving nation. So, what changed? It was a slow cook, and since this is a futebol blog, let’s break it down in World Cup cycles.

When I first arrived in New York City back in 2006, during the Germany World Cup, to two World Cups later in 2014, I felt a noticeable shift in the way people talked about the beautiful game. The change was palpable in my interactions, the news cycle, and even on the streets. During the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, I was a senior creative at TBWA/CHIAT/DAY, and my American manager let me leave work mid-afternoon to watch Brazil vs. Germany at home. In hindsight, I should have stayed at the office—it would have been a much more pleasant afternoon. But, as Chino Moreno once said, I’ve watched a change in you…USA.

The year before and, in an all-planets-aligned scenario, the agency has just won beIN SPORTS as a client and happens to have a Brazilian creative team on it (this guy!). The sports channel had recently launched operations on American soil and held the broadcast rights for LaLiga, Serie A, and Ligue 1. It’s wild to think now that a relatively small player like beIN SPORTS controlled major European leagues at a time when Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo were at their peak with Barça and Madrid.

 I knew, probably to an unhealthy degree, what it meant to live and breathe soccer. My creative partner and I applied this mindset to our work with beIN SPORTS, where everything and everywhere became an opportunity to experience soccer. For those familiar with the creative process, you know there’s a strategic side, and then there’s the part where you’re just tossing spaghetti at the wall. What if we did this? Or that? Then the spaghetti hit us—while staring at a field goal post, we realized it’s basically a soccer goal post turned upside down. Wait up, I think we’ve got something here.

We pitched the idea to create a stunt at college and high school football fields, where we would transform them into soccer fields overnight by simply turning the field goal posts upside down—a soccer installation alá Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

We loved it, and so did everyone on our team. High-fives were given all around. The problem was, the client didn’t want to do it. They decided to launch the brand with a traditional 30-second commercial running nationally. That’s when we played the ad industry’s favorite game: PIVOT!

We adapted the stunt OOH activation into a TV script: a couple of friends sneak into a football field to take down the field goal post and turn it upside down, transforming it into a soccer goal. And voilà, we had ourselves a brand TV spot. beIN SPORTS gave the green light, and we moved into production.

Here’s another reality of the ad industry: You can write a Nike spot, but chances are, you won’t have a Nike budget (sometimes not even when working with Nike). Our budget was more like an indie movie’s, but we’re fighting the good fight.

We teamed up with Variable Productions and director Jon Bregel, who brought a gritty, urban feel to the story—an aesthetic he honed from filming skaters in New York City.

Shooting in New York within budget while maintaining quality is a delicate dance of numbers and scheduling, all while racing against the clock. To make it work, our producers informed us we’d have to shoot it in 12 hours. Not two days, not even one full day—nope, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.

The shoot took place at Red Hook Park in Brooklyn—on a baseball field, interestingly enough. So, we had to bring our own field goal, pulled in dramatically by a massive crane. Since it was a baseball field, here’s the curveball: the management didn’t cut the grass the night before, assuming it was ‘better for soccer.’ Never assume, people. So, any sequence we planned with our talent running with the ball at their feet had to be scratched because the ball would get trapped in the grass. Even Jamal Musiala would’ve looked like an amateur out there. It was time to improvise.

Every break between setting up the lighting, my partner and I would brainstorm with Jon, who, by the way, was shooting soccer for the first time in his life. We tossed around ideas for moves, dribbles, and shots, aiming to strike a balance between rehearsed action and authentic reactions. Like in a real game, you never know where the ball is going to go. So, after that curveball, we were rolling with the punches—acting a bit like coaches, assessing the skill level of each actor and what they could pull off, then sitting on the sidelines and hoping for the best.

In the most ‘life imitates sport and vice versa’ kind of way, the crew behind the camera was silently cheering on our cast, urging them to nail every shot as if they were coming from behind, needing a result to stay in the game. There were no redos. No second chances. This. Was. It. As time ticked away, the actors kept trying to score from a cross, but they couldn’t connect. It came down to the wire—one of the last crosses had decent height and pace. One of the guys ran towards it, headed it with power… right into the crossbar! Time was up. The lighting shifted from night to dawn, and we were losing continuity. We got what we got. We gave our all and left everything on the field. Exhausted, I wasn’t sure what to expect going into editing.

Scanning through every second of footage might sound cumbersome to some, but not to me. You never know where you’ll find a moment of pure magic, a second that can elevate the work. And, after so many hurdles, there were plenty of great moments to build from. We landed on a cut that our team at CHIAT and beIN SPORTS were happy with.

Now, the cherry on top—music. It’s surprising how often music is overlooked or downplayed in ads, when it can truly make a piece sing, depending on what you choose to play. With our tight budget, every stock music sample we tried over the footage was painful to hear. Nothing fit. Then my boss’s boss, the Executive Creative Director, saw the cut and made a suggestion that could only have come from someone 100% steeped in American culture—the Notre Dame fighting song, a universally recognized anthem for American football, played over the action of kids subverting football into soccer. Plus, the track was old enough to be royalty-free. Our cherry was officially on top.

After months of hustling, we went from words on a script to a thought-provoking storytelling piece that visually expressed how the lines between soccer and football had blurred, changing the way a whole country watched and experienced the beautiful game. The film won bronze at the first edition of the Clio Sports Awards, a sign that we’d hit the bullseye with this one.

But what really satisfies me is seeing how this creative piece envisioned and contributed to what’s happening today with the explosion of European Leagues, the MLS, Messi at Inter Miami, and Americans becoming truly obsessed fans. I say Soccer, you say Football, what matters is the love for it.