Over the past 3 weeks football chat has dominated conversation in the office. It’s not unusual to for us to be discussing sports anyway as we are quite keen fans often casting our opinions on a wide range from Formula One, to Cricket, Rugby and of course Football. We are also quite an internationally diverse group with Brazilians, South Africans, Jamaicans, Scottish and English making up the vzaar team, so national pride was at stake. Obviously not all countries made it through to the world cup finals but that did not matter. Everyone had their team.
Refreshingly, I also found football chatter making it into conversations outside of the office with partners and customers. For instance, on the day Uruguay played Ghana our customers in Montevideo, Genexus, emailed us for our blessings and prayers. Such was the significance of the game they were calling on any and every piece of support to guide their country to victory. A victory they achieved when the game was finally decided on penalties.
In other conversations with our CDN, Edgecast, an American company and a nation England faced in the opening round there was good friendly banter about the group we were both in and the 1-1 result of our head to head match. I also liked the New York Posts headline after the match. It’s ‘cheeri-yo!‘ and I believe other reports printed “USA win 1-1″. Fair enough, we were the favourites.
vzaar, later this year will be offering customers an advertising solution and as such we are in conversations with Adtech a German based ad network. To date we have had six email exchanges and only one has to do with our partnership the balance is purely football. The Germans and the English have much history together. Football history that is, and any matches played between the two are well hyped and watched by many. In 1966, England won the World Cup beating Germany in the final. Many will recall the controversial goal that was given to England even though the ball may not have actually crossed the goal line. So it was ironic that this game played in South Africa between the same two teams should produce a goal that was disallowed for not crossing the goal line when it clearly did. In any event, England have been knocked out by Germany who have since beaten Argentina and it must be said are now looking strong and are my favourites to go all the way.
It will be sad when the World Cup draws to a close but I have enjoyed the conversations out side of the business of online video hosting with my customers and partners. Football and sport in general is a powerful way to unite people all over the world.
A final thought…
In a sport as rich and popular as Football its remarkable to think that technology has not participated in determining significant decisions such as goals, even more so when the score line rarely yields more than a few. Other sports such as Tennis, Rugby and Cricket use video technology to adjudicate match winning decisions so why not Football. Perhaps Brazil will see this technology in 2014.
