All had at least one Nike ad in their list, which must be particularly galling for Adidas given that, unlike Nike, it has forked out an estimated US$45 million to be an official sponsor of the World Cup.
So what about the brands with no obvious link to the sport? Can they still get a piece of the footballing action, or will they do themselves more harm than good by attempting to cash in on its popularity?
"Some brands have to work a lot harder than others to create that link," says Flintham. "As a football fan I was really annoyed when Coca-Cola started doing those `Eat football, Sleep football, Drink Coca-Cola' ads. I thought, how dare you? You don't know anything about football, you're just trying to buy your way into it. But then they did those ads for Euro '96 with the eagle mascot and the blind guy watching football with his mate, and all of a sudden it was like they'd suddenly got it. They showed me that a brand I didn't think could understand football could."
McDonald's is another brand that has tried for years to capitalize on the success of football, with varying degrees of success. A burger chain is hardly the most obvious fit with sport of any kind, but the company's Alan Shearer ads -- including a hilarious spoof of Cantona's philosophizing Eurostar commercial -- have at times been spot on.
John O'Keeffe, creative director of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, believes the reason why so many football-related ads work is that agencies have to be spontaneous and react quickly to events. He says: "It's the ads that grab your attention that are the best. It's actually quite hard to get an ad away nowadays, and with tactical campaigns you have a much better chance of getting your ads through uninterfered with. You don't have time for lots of people to make their changes because you need to run the ads now or you miss the moment."
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