Adidas' homage brings World Cup fervour to Cologne

This 800 square metre painting for adidas, bearing a conspicuous allusion to the Sistine Chapel in Rome, covers the entire ceiling of the central train station in Cologne, Germany. Created by TBWA Deutschland, the illustration took nearly 40 days to complete and captures 10 football stars in celestial action: David Beckham (UK), Michael Ballack and Lukas Podolski (Germany), Zinédine Zidane and Djibril Cissé (France), Shunsuke Nakamura (Japan), Raul González (Spain), Kaka (Brazil), and Lionel Messi and Juan Román Riquelme (Argentina). The fresco is adidas' second major World Cup execution in Germany, a week after the official sponsor installed a giant billboard of German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn diving for a ball across a four-lane highway. <BR>See The Work, page 22