THE IMPOSSIBLE CUP

The Impossible Cup is an Instagram project that intends to answer a recurring football related question: which is the best football team in history?

To find it out, a tournament was created between some of the most important teams in football history, but because they belong to different times, they never competed against each other. So, through the imagination of talented sports journalists and script writers, those games finally took place.

Each game has its build up, its poster and its article, which was featured on the stories. After every game, we sparked the conversation with a contentious post.

The project received very positive feedback from our audience and was published in some important Argentinian newspapers.

A roster of skilled illustrators collaborated on the project to bring to life the cover of every game.

The articles lived in the stories.

Links to some of the articles (English versions): The Final: Man U '99 v Napoli '87 / Third place games: Barcelona '09 v Milan '89 / Quarter-final game: Real Madrid '17 v Napoli '87

The highlights of every story were also drawn.

The cup fixture was part of the journey too.

We also showed the players enjoying their free time before the semi-final games.

And of course, we couldn’t miss the champions’ poster.

The first edition worked very well, so a Libertadores Cup followed.

A poster was created to introduce the tournament together with a series of educational posts that showed the key players of every team and told a brief history of their squads.

Then each game had its build up, artwork and highlight coverage, scripted and illustrated by an incredible selection of talented writers and illustrators.

Every game kicked-off with a front cover. Here are some of them.

A series of vintage tickets were used as an invitation to read the stories.

Artists from Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Mexico and UK collaborated on the posters.

Links to some of the stories (English versions): The Final: Boca '00 v River '18 / Semi-final game: Peñarol ‘82 v River ‘18 / Quarter-final game: Peñarol ‘82 v Atl. Nacional ‘89 / Round of 16 game: Boca ‘00 v Velez ‘94

The best moments of the stories were drawn, summing up more than 100 best moments.

The Libertadores Cup spirit is to fight for every ball with all your heart and strength. We counted on the talent of painter Hetu Negri to capture on of those moments in his master piece called ‘Random redistribution of grey matter after being intercepted by unknown body at 102km/h’, oil on #canson paper 24x33cm 290g/m2.

After every game, a summary was published. Results, goals, yellow and red cards, the man of the match, incidents and more.

The storytelling was a very important part of this project, so we shared posts after every game that kept our followers talking about what happened in the story.

The final game faced two of the best teams in South America football history: Bianchi’s Boca and Gallardo’s River. The game didn’t need any warm-up, but we heated it up anyway.

In our stories, we played with the fact that 2018’s Boca-River Libertadores final was postponed more than once.

A big game needed a big presentation, so we painted a mural in Buenos Aires, somewhere between Boca and River’s stadiums.