L’ULTIMA.35

Welcome to L’ULTIMA, an ongoing archive of football iconography and original writing meant to explore football's place in society and the cultural implications of its role in those spaces. The name takes its inspiration from ‘L'ultima occasione,’ a song written by the Italian singer Mina Mazzini in the summer of 1965. This is the thirty-fifth edition.

Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait

Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parenno’s ambitious collaboration follows the French soccer star Zinédine Zidane in real time over the course of a single match, which took place in 2005. Assembled from footage shot by seventeen synchronized cameras placed around the stadium, the film captures Zidane from multiple angles, from up close and afar, and remains steadfastly fixed on him even when the central action of the match moves elsewhere. Gordon and Parreno conceived of the project in relation to painted portraiture extending back to Francisco de Goya and Diego Velázquez as well as the more immediate precursor of Andy Warhol’s real-time film portraits. By splicing in footage from the live television broadcast, Gordon and Parreno complicate their film portrait, foregrounding the mediated nature of the spectacle. via Guggenheim.

Typography Sunday

1. FC Köln’s Bodo Illgner in 1991 wearing a keeper kit that dreamed of a better future, one that could only have been designed in the early aughts of the NOKIAWAVE ‘90s.

A Picture of the Santiago Bernabéu in the 1970s

Goodreads

The Fading of a Star

Neymar went to Paris to step out of Lionel Messi’s shadow, to live up to his billing as soccer’s next best thing. Nearly three years on, the move has been a comprehensive failure.