The Cage by Nike is back

After 18 years, The Cage returns, Nike's top secret tournament with three-on-three "clandestine" challenges between players in hidden places. It is a re-proposal of the 2002 Swoosh commercial, in which, inside a container ship, a competition takes place between great football champions with unreserved challenges. Now, Nike proposes it again with Instagram stories in which eight teams face each other virtually through the vote of followers starting from the quarter-finals: the trio that will receive the most "tap" will advance to the next stage, the semifinals, scheduled for November 11. This is not exactly the second time the Secret Tournament has returned: last April, nss sports had created (together with Outline Studio) a new edition of the Cage with the champions of now. Cr7's Toro Locos, Sergio Ramos and Wayne Rooney won.

 

Nike has chosen a completely different collection of challengers from the 2002 commercial. There are not the great champions of the current football period, but those of the future. In fact, there are many young talents from the next gen of many countries together with the best female footballers of the moment, and of course, they are all nike athletes. The aesthetics of the clandestine challenge remained in the flyers that Nike had used in 2002 to present the various teams of the tournament, with posters of various colors with the name of the team and the faces of the players written on it, all made with a scratched style. Teams are mixed between players and players, with the following scoreboard:

BRASILGEAM (Cunha, Rodrygo, Debunha) vs THE G-TEAM (Greenwood, Geyord, Giugliano) PRECIOUS CARGO (Havertz, Harder, Under) vs THE STRIKERS COMITTEE (Lautaro, Zhang, Kirby), CITY SLICKERS (Walsh, Bronze, Foden) vs THE ONETOUCHABLES (McKenzie, Pugh, Mewis),    SILKY SMOOTH (Mount, Alexia, Stanway) vs NEXT UP (Camavinga, Castellanos, Tonali).  

The 2002 commercial became an incredible icon of the aesthetics of street football and the top of the spot of the first two thousand. These were the years in which Nike aired many advertisements that then became famous, with stories of great imagination but precisely for this reason famous. Not only The Cage, with Totti-Nakata-Henry beating Figo-Ronaldo-Roberto Carlos in the final (with a stroke of genius), but also the players who challenge the devils in an epic battle for the salvation of the world. Then, of course, the Joga TV series, Joga Bonito's channel where tricks are the real target of football, more than goals and teamwork.

As in The Cage, where they are seen played out of the ordinary and that for this reason they launch a fashion, that of street football as a mainstream event, in which fans enjoy imagining their champions - Dinho, Totti, Cannavaro - playing with challenges without rules or on makeshift courts (scenario that adidas, in 2006, proposes with José 10+) and which also inspires EA Sports with FIFA Street , first released in 2005 until 2008.