World Cup Fever! Ole Ole Ole : Part 2

In this entry, FTN brings to you the mascots of FIFA World Cup from 1990 until the coming 2010 tournament. There's always a new mascot for each tournament. These mascots represents the host country and a very good way to promote the tournament. Mascot are designed to be colorful, and mostly targeted at children. The first mascot of the World Cup was the 'World Cup Willie', a lion that represents England as the host of 1966 World Cup.

Let's flashback some of the most remembered mascot of the World Cup. I won't go even further than 1990 because I could barely remember anything from the 1986's World Cup. (hehehe)

CIAO
1990 World Cup - venue : ITALY
A stick figure player with a football head and an Italian tricolore body. Its name is an Italian greeting.

STRIKER
1994 World Cup - venue : USA
A dog, wearing a red, white and blue football uniform with the words "USA 94".

FOOTIX
1998 World Cup - venue : FRANCE
A rooster, one of the national symbols of France, with the words "FRANCE 98" on the chest. Its body is mostly blue, like the host's national team shirt and its name is a portmanteau of "football" and the ending "-ix" from the popular Astérix comic strip. Other proposed names were "Raffy", "Houpi" and "Gallik".

ATO, KAZ and NIK
2000 World Cup - venue : JAPAN and SOUTH KOREA
Orange, purple and blue (respectively) futuristic, computer-generated creatures. Collectively members of a team of "Atmoball" (a fictional football-like sport), Ato is the coach while Kaz and Nik are players. The three individual names were selected from shortlists by users on the Internet and at McDonald's outlets in the host countries.

GOLEO
2006 World Cup - venue : GERMANY
A lion wearing a Germany shirt with the number 06 and a talking football named Pille. Goleo is a portmanteau of the words "goal" and "leo", the Latin word for lion. In Germany, "Pille" is a colloquial term for a football.

ZAKUMI
2010 World Cup - venue : SOUTH AFRICA
Zakumi is a leopard with green hair wearing a shirt saying South Africa 2010. Zakumi's green and gold colors represents South African national sports' teams colors. His name comes from "ZA", the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code for South Africa, and "kumi", a word that means "ten" in various African languages.


REFERENCE : WIKIPEDIA