The ever growing hype of the history making 2010 World Cup to be held on African soil for the first time has found a new audience in the haute celebrity pages of Vanity Fair. World renown Photographer, Annie Leibovitz shot the cover story with select footballers such as: Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, Ivory Coast’s Didier Drogba, Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o, Ghana’s Sulley Muntari, the U.S.A.’s Landon Donovan, Brazil’s Kaká and Pato, Italy’s Gianluigi Buffon, Serbia’s Dejan Stankovic, England’s Carlton Cole, and Germany’s Michael Ballack representing their nations at the World Cup to be hosted next month (starts June 11th) in post apartheid South Africa.

Football, the one actually played with the foot, is considered the world’s game with close to 7 billion people in the world embracing the sport as more of a religion than just a game! Vanity Fair’s June cover story brings the global game to an American audience who may know little to nothing about a game which the rest of the world plays & garners billions in fans, monetary revenue & high profile endorsements annually.

Judging from some of the picks to represent the top players in Vanity Fair’s chosen moniker of “the beautiful game”, with the focus more on beauty & sex appeal rather than purely talent, I am sure true football fans will have a bone to pick with Vanity Fair. France, with one of the best teams in football & multiple world cup wins to boot has no player representation in the June Cover story spread & personally I am saddened to see that none of the young, up & coming players got any shine, particularly the leading members of the Ghana Black Satellites going to the world cup, who not only single handedly  took Ghana to the finals of the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations & almost delivered the championship, as the young underdogs  taking the place of all the injured international seasoned players, while also making history this past year by being the first African nation to win the under-20 world cup against the football powerhouse of Brazil, who for some reason Vanity Fair felt should have two players featured to represent their nation. I have not read the issue, as it has not hit newsstands quite yet, so maybe the inside pages will bring some great surprises, but I won’t hold my breath as the marketing selling point seems to be more about hard bodies than hard working players. In true American, Madison Avenue sex sells form, Americans will be introduced to the World Cup thru the shirtless national flag baring skivvies of some of the world’s greatest footballers, as they pick up the June issue of Vanity Fair! Enjoy & hopefully learn something about the Global Game!