"Footballverse"

16 November 2022

4 mins 26s

Time spasms.

DAVID suspects that the leaping off point for this script was the realisation by one of the creatives at Wieden + Kennedy in Amsterdam that Geneva isn't just the home of FIFA, it's also the location of CERN, and its Large Hadron Collider. This convenient juxtaposition is the McGuffin for a crazy adventure which pits footballers of different eras against one another in the multiverse.

It kicks off with a battle between past master Ronaldinho and current star Kylian Mbappé. The magic of science enables the former to turn up as his younger self, which evens out the contest, and the both have the opportunity to meet the twin imposters of triumph and disaster with equanimity.

What follows is agreeably chaotic as the scientists of CERN introduce more and more players from the past including several versions of Cristiano Ronaldo... all of whom are equally tedious.

It's tempting to imagine that it must be fun to make something like this, but we all know that it would have been a logistical nightmare, and it's nothing short of a miracle that Megaforce have imbued it with so much fun.

It ends on a note of destiny unfulfilled, as a collection of silhouetted players entering this year's tournament stand ready to collect the trophy. Who are they? Well, no one knows... and if the tournament continues to be overshadowed by the dubious ethics of the host country... who cares?

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