Sport marketing, violence and the style of it

in my morning paper scanning today the notable stories are the faux-tour for western journalists in tibet that the monks so rightly 'interrupted' and Muqtada al-Sadr calling out the militia in Basra.

I'm going to speak on the latter, but maybe not about what you are expecting-I'm leaving the explicit politics out of this one because we are well aware of them, more or less.

Every picture i've seen of the protesting in Basra and Sadr City have had the ubiquitous young men wearing European football shirts. Again, we are quite sure of the universality of the sport and its followers, but where do they get the jerseys? Clearly they arent paying the 35 quid/50ish Euro (theyre the real currencies now arent they?) a pop for them, and certainly many are knock-offs, but many give every appearance of being authentic-patches, lettering and numbering all correct. So where do they get them? donations from the respective clubs? nike/adidas/kappa? unicef? BArring the last one, its quite effective advertising is it not? Mssrs. Beckham and Ronaldo can only sell so many, why not have the South target the North, simply through appearing in public, an inevitable something in a war zone, and certainly cheaper than a mega-endorsement deal to a footballer. The advertising cost is merely the price of the shirt.

Oh the charities of the great MNCs.