Not so much sneaking up on you as quietly breaking into your house at night and rearranging your furniture for no reason, the World Cup is just a shade over 3 weeks away. Let’s do a countdown within the countdown: The opening titles of each 90’s World Cup from BBC and ITV, ranked.
#6 – ITV, USA ’94 – Gloryland
Facepainted children advertising Panasonic is probably the high point, though at least they don’t go too hard on the American stereotypes, limiting it to just the bald eagle and the Stars & Stripes. There’s no actual football on display, just a few shots of various players celebrating a bit, and then one massive group bundle shot at the end. The song, “Glorlyand”, performed by Daryl Hall and the Sounds of Blackness, is presumably supposed to be a rousing number, but is a caustic mix of euro-pop and gospel music more terrible than anything on David Hasselhoff’s greatest hits. (Speaking of which, the song “Hot Shot City” is particularly good).
#5 – BBC, France ’98 – Pavane
We enter through the doors of what is supposedly an upmarket French restaurant, but it looks suspiciously like the set of Ocean World from the Crystal Maze. The focus remains on the interior furnishings, whilst a few classic World Cup moments play slightly blurred in the background: the Pele header, the Cruyff turn, Gazza crying. The focus then shifts to wine, with Alan Shearer appearing in 8 glasses all at once, Zidane and some others appear in 4 glasses. Baguettes. Waiters. Napkins. Finally the camera tilts up to the sun streaming through a stained glass manifestation of the trophy itself. This was dull, and had rosbif fingerprints all over it.
#4 – BBC, Italia ’90 – Nessun Dorma
Yes, yes, it’s a “classic”. And of course, Pavarotti’s fearsome tenor delivery is mesmerizing. But we’re not judging this on nostalgia or music choice alone. There’s no hint of football for the first 30 seconds of this, which is taken up by shots of artwork and two ballerinas dancing around a giant, floating orange, which eventually turns into a football, or something approaching one. We finally get some action, and it’s slow-mo shots of Pele celebrating, the Cruyff turn, Maradona dribbling. There’s a diving header. Marco van Basten foreshadowing Alan Shearer’s hand-raised-whilst-running celebration. Brief shots of Irish, Scottish and English players celebrating, before ending on Marco Tardelli’s iconic running, arms-pumping, emotionally wrecked face celebration from 1982. Simple enough, I suppose, and definitely classier than the ’98 effort, but I think English memories of the run to the semi-final have lionized a pretty tame visual effort.
#3 – ITV, France ’98 – Rendez-vous ’98
Opening with a firework-strewn Eiffel tower, we segue into an amusing if somewhat incongruous sponsorship bit for Vauxhall. A few more clichés Francais: an old bloke wearing a France ’98 cap, tour de France, the Eurostar, vineyards. Boules. It then shows us a hand-animated billboard of real Ronaldo running, which morphs into actual footage of real Ronaldo running, and suddenly we’re in amongst the action. Shearer shoots and (preusmably) scores. Michael Owen scores. Shearer celebrates in the rain. Owen celebrates in the dry. There’s a few more random bits of stock footage and a French traffic warden (or something – I know there’s a special name for them but I can’t remember it). John Collins scores a penalty against Brazil and Craig Brown leaps for joy. It sort of tapers off a bit towards the end, but the soundtrack of Jean Michel Jarre & Apollo 440 is just cheesy greatness.
#2 – ITV, Italia ’90 – Tutti al mondo
We’re entering earth’s atmosphere as the lines of a football pitch start appearing along with a truckload of balls. The ball spins towards us, and it’s the classic pentagon/hexagon ball design. On the pentagons, images of various historical players are superimposed – Bobby Charlton, Pele, Johan Cruyff, Roger Federer. (Yes, I was surprised as well). The ball spins away. We’re now settled in a geostationary orbit above Italy, and there’s loads of balls bouncing everywhere, hitting the dots that presumably represent the various stadia locations being used for the event. Someone starts whipping in crosses for Michaelangelo’s David, who nods them in like a prime, naked Duncan Ferguson. The mascot, Ciao, knocks in a sweet half volley. There’s still time for one more statue, I think it’s Apollo and Daphne, to get in on the act, lobbing a ball somewhere like a bored neighbour throwing next-door’s ball back for the thousandth time. Finally, we get some classic Italian cars parked in a somewhat cavalier manner outside the Colosseum, and that’s it really. The song is great, very Depehce Mode-y, but fits the kitsch opening titles perfectly. It’s a really neat little package, just let down by a lack of actual, real football and not just statues doing headers (though that bit is great).
#1 – BBC, USA ’94 – America
Crucially remembering that, to introduce a football programme, it’s common sense to show football action, and, like, goals. Of course, it’s USA! USA! USA! so there’s a litany of visual cliches – Statue of Liberty, White House, Mickey Mouse, but we also get a montage of goals, fouls, Jack Charlton grinning and Pat Bonner doing the head-tilted “careful!” expression. Bernstein’s “America” from West Side Story gives it a huge amount of drive. Presumably because England weren’t in it, the higher profile producer dweebs at beeb couldn’t be arsed, resulting in a coherent, exciting set of opening titles. Excellent stuff.
Today’s feeling: Out in the groups after Diana Ross makes amends for the ’94 opening ceremony and scores the only goal from the spot to knock England out.
