Samsung assembles the greatest football team ever to promote the Galaxy 11

A few weeks ago, Samsung posted a bizarre video about aliens and crop circles staring legendary footballer/soccer player Franz Beckenbauer. The video seemed to be just one of Samsung’s marketing ploys that people would look at and then forget. On second thought, what if this is part of a campaign to promote a new Galaxy tablet that will be released next year?

The reason I didn’t pay much attention to the Galaxy 11 promotion is because I assumed it was just going to be a generic promotional campaign for all Samsung products in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup. The 11 number made sense because that’s the number of players on a soccer team, and the website already promotes existing products like the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Gear smart watch.

What if there’s more to it than that? Korean website ETNews has posted a rumor suggesting that Samsung might release a tablet with a 10.5-inch OLED screen as early as next month. Samsung tablets are typically 10.1-inch LCD’s, and other rumors have suggested it might go as high as a 12-inches. There’s nothing concrete to suggest that Samsung would make an 11-inch tablet, but this Galaxy 11 campaign seems like an awful lot to promote two existing products, especially when the company went out of its way to select 13 star athletes representing countries or clubs on every continent other than Australia. Maybe - and this is a big maybe - the Galaxy 11 will be a product instead of just a marketing stunt?

Galaxy 11 Squad

1. Lionel Messi (Argentina; Captain)

2. Mario Götze (Germany)

3. Oscar dos Santos Emboaba Jr. (Brazil)

4. Wu Lei (China)

5. Stephan El Shaarawy (Italy)

6. Victor Moses (Nigeria)

7. Radamel Falcao (Colombia)

8. Lee Chung-Yong (South Korea)

9. Iker Casillas (Spain)

10. Wayne Rooney (England)

11. Landon Donovan (United States of America)

12. Alexander Kerzhakov (Russia)

13. Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal)