If footballers had their own entry music
The make-believe universe of WWE has, for long, featured a number of memorable songs which serve as entrance music when a WWE superstar enters the arena. This tradition helps build up the spectator experience and makes it a greater spectacle for both the ringside audience, as well as for viewers who will catch the production later on the tube.
Football, when you think about it, already has enough drawing power to make it the most popular game in the world by a distance. Yet, as a team game, individual players’ identities are quite suppressed due to being part of a group.
But the biggest football stars have their own drawing power – many female football fans also follow the game to be able to relax while watching 22 well-groomed gentlemen battle it out for 90 minutes.
The addition of entrance music for football’s great icons is a great idea worth considering, so as to ratchet up the TRPs of broadcasters and give players some fun moments and opportunities for banter (friendly or otherwise). We follow up with footballers and songs which would serve as their ideal entry music.
1. Zlatan Ibrahimovic – Blackwater Park by Opeth (Blackwater Park, 2001)
Zlatan is a national icon – one of the people that citizens of Sweden consider to be the reason for their national pride and joy. The Swedish progressive metal music scene is one of the best in the world and has led to the rise of rockers of world-renowned bands like Meshuggah, Opeth, Eluiveitie, Katatonia among others.
It would be epicness if Zlatan’s entry onto the football pitch were to be marked by one of the best songs ever written by Swedish prog metal gods Opeth. ‘Blackwater Park’ is one of the epics in Opeth’s huge body of work.
From subtle changes in tempo, extreme switches between the mellow parts and the death metal parts, it typifies Opeth’s old approach to songwriting and is an epic lasting over 12 minutes.
One can easily picture Zlatan celebrating goals with those fearsome death growls by Akerfeldt playing through the stadium.