Djurgården IF (DIF) is a sports club in Sweden founded in 1891. Their fans seem to have undergone a long period of transition, after its most active group organizing tifo displays, Ultras STHLM, fell apart. But new groups have taken on the mantle, including Ultra Caos Stockholm, who produced the trailer for the DVD featured above.

The Djurgården ultras continue to face problems with the crackdowns on use of pyrotechnics: the ultras argue that the repression leads to irresponsible handling (flares are then often dropped near flags so perpetrators cannot be so easily identified), and that a safe approach agreed by the club and supporters is needed. Indeed, there’s even a non-pyro version of the above video used for wider distribution.

The Djurgården fans are also active with the production of tifo displays for the club’s ice hockey team: impressive stuff!

Don’t try this at home, kids. Especially the stuff at the 2:10 mark.

H/T: Ultras-tifo.net

One day, about two years ago, an unlikely story unfolded in front of his eyes, featuring men who were very much not locals: “A soccer game started on one of the fields I was walking by. I photographed and took video of this experience. Later on after taking the video, I learned that the team was the Ghana national team! Amazing and random all at the same time.”

Ghana In Fog from Paul Octavious on Vimeo. Thank you to Joel for the tip.

Chris Good at The Atlantic:

Nike’s new ad, in keeping with that advertising tradition, is one of the highest-end pieces of commercial art you’ll see, considering the production from a bona fide filmmaker and the aggregate global appeal of all the multi-national stars on screen. Its airing will be an oddly tailored event of art, commerce and sport.

Or is it bloated, macho cliche in comparison to Puma’s own video?

Jennifer Doyle at From A Left Wing:

Contrast the above (and its soundtrack) with Nike’s bloated ad, which is seasoned with the most tired forms of machismo and sexism. Here there are even a few girls and women, presented not as sex objects or football failures, but as fans and players (asking the boys to give her the ball!). This ad, furthermore, is actually about African soccer.

Both videos are, obviously, impressive productions. And perhaps the biggest irony of all is that neither Nike nor Puma are official FIFA World Cup sponsors: you’ll notice if you watch both videos again that there is no mention of the World Cup itself. But we don’t need that: such is the global fever for the World Cup, we effortlessly read into these videos the event itself, without either company having to shell out millions to sponsor it (of course, they have both shelled out millions to sponsor the teams and players featured).

Indeed, Jim Edwards at BNET raises this as an interesting problem for the events themselves:

It’s yet more proof that marketers can “own” even the world’s biggest sporting event without paying a red cent in contract fees — if you’re clever enough.

This is a significant problem for sports sponsorship: NBC vastly overpaid to broadcast the Olympics and lost money when advertisers didn’t show up. Sure, the recession didn’t help. But it’s also to do with the fact that venues such as Youtube, where the Nike ad is already approaching 1 million views, offer massive audiences for zero money. Why bother paying for an official slot when an unofficial effort is so much more efficient?

Interestingly, one of Adidas’ World Cup videos — which is much more along the lines of Puma’s effort than Nike’s, but has received far less attention — also does not mention the event itself. And its relaxed insouciance, especially given the hype we cannot avoid elsewhere surrounding the event, might actually make it my favourite.

Update: A reader has made the important correction to me that the Adidas video above was actually made on spec by director Igor Martinovic, and is not an official Adidas video.  Shame, for Adidas, though I guess that’s some damn cheap good publicity they have….

Boy, do they start them young in Poland. Ever wondered why there seems to an endless supply of ultras willing to anything and everything for their team, from singing to, well, burning stuff at very dangerous temperatures?

Maybe it’s because the culture filters all the way down to junior tournaments.

The Lech Cup for under elevens is one of Europe’s elite youth tournaments, and this year’s edition featured Tottenham Hotspur, Barcelona (well, their Hong Kong youth team spin-off) and Valencia. And of course, hosts Lech Poznań, who brought a few supporters out.

The banner reads something like “Everyone starts out small in order to achieve something big.” Welcome to Polish football, kids.

In a return of our tifo video series, we stop in Sweden to look at a beautifully choreographed and executed tifo display by supporters of IFK Göteborg in a match against AIK (who we featured just a month or two ago) earlier this year.

This two-tier display includes flag waving on the terrace above, with scarves held up across the lower level below.

And then….there’s a little colour added to proceedings.

Today, our tifo series swings to Asia for the first time.

We check out Japanese fans at the Nabisco Cup (also known as the J-League Cup) final between Kawasaki Frontale and FC Tokyo, held earlier this week.

This video is a little slow to get going, but there’s some gorgeous colour, some impressive banners, and generally well choreographed displays from supporters of both teams.

And the coup de grâce: a mascot on rollerskates.

Many thanks to @aishiterutokyo on Twitter for the tip. Check out his FC Tokyo blog as well.

Our tifo video series rolls across from Belgium to Switzerland, and we find ourselves in Lausanne, a small French-speaking city perhaps best known as the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee.

Swiss club FC Lausanne-Sport, founded in 1896 and successful for their first half-century, haven’t won the league championship for other forty years.

Their supporters’ group Blue-White Fanatic Kop (BWFK) take their name from Lausanne’s colours, and their English spelling and use of Kop is indicative of their formation in the 80s, when the influence of English support on the continent was considerable.

The group recently celebrated their twentieth anniversary, and decided to mark it with a pre-game display translating roughly as “united for twenty years”. It’s fairly spectacular, despite the rather noticeably empty stands.