Token African striker (OK, Drogba) beats numerous defenders before chipping the keeper only to be denied glory by a goal-line overhead kick from Canelloni (sorry Cannavaro). Insert Italian celebratory song and dancing girls. Rooney chests down the clearance before playing a sloppy intercepted pass. Insert failure montage culminating with a bearded Wayne exiled to a caravan. Inspired by this dystopic future, Rooney chases down Ribéry and slide tackles. Insert alternative success montage – Rooney is knighted, Britain’s crippled stock market recovers, newborns are named Wayne en masse and Federer is defeated at ping pong. Brazil’s Ronaldinho dazzles with some fancy footwork to swing in a cross. Insert worldwide dissemination of his step-over move including replication by Kobe Bryant. Finally enter golden boy Ronaldo, accompanied by an autobiographical movie, Homer Simpson and a 3-storey blinged statue.

Despite an impressive plethora of sportstars, the Nike World Cup ad is fatally flawed in several respects. Kobe Bryant is best known this side of the Atlantic for a sexual assault case that was later dropped. Similarly Ribéry, embroiled in an underage prostitution investigation, was banned from the Champions League Final. Ronaldinho, fancy footwork or not, was considered too old to be selected for this year’s Brazil squad. Football faux pas indeed but nothing in comparison to the stars’ underperformance in the World Cup to date. At the time of writing (20/6/10) Drogba, Rooney, Ribéry and Ronaldo have played woefully in the opening games and Cannavaro has just handed New Zealand a(n arguably offside) tap-in. Even Federer struggled in his opening Wimbledon game against relative unknown, Alejandro Falla.

The Nike curse is well-documented. Previous ads featured Eric Cantona, subsequently dropped, and Dennis Bergkamp, before uncharacteristically Holland failed to qualify. Only the Madden Curse, where American football players appearing on the videogame box art suffer a degradation in performance, is comparable in terms of expense and embarrassment. To quote the commercial’s only character not cursed… D’oh.

Shrek upgraded from the swamp before MTV Cribs came a knocking