This week professional Spanish soccer player Gerard Pique tweeted out two videos of his recent visit to Japan; one in which he performs a cover of last year’s viral sensation “PPAP” with Pikotaro himself, and another one which resulted in a bit of criticism from many Japanese Twitter users.
In the Pikotaro video, Pique, who plays for FC Barcelona and the national Spanish soccer team, appears wearing a leopard print scarf and sunglasses, which he borrowed from Pikotaro. At the end of the video Pikotaro can be heard calling their special musical duo “Pique and Piko.”
Check out the video below.
— Gerard Piqué (@3gerardpique) July 10, 2017
Pique’s team-up video with Pikotaro was pretty well received by people on Twitter, managing to get almost 30,000 retweets and close to 60,000 likes since it was tweeted out earlier this week. Unfortunately for Pique the other video he posted of his trip to Japan ended up causing a bit of an uproar among some Japanese Twitter users.
The video in question shows Pique on top of a building in Tokyo. Somebody passes him a soccer ball and he begins to show off his talents by juggling the ball. Everyone is watching and it seems like they’re all having a good time but then, Pique decides to kick the ball into the sky where after reaching the peak of its arc, it begins to fall and lands somewhere in the streets of one of the busiest and most crowded cities in the world. Although it appears that no one got hurt from Pique’s actions, many people on Twitter left comments criticizing both his lack of concern for the people he could have hurt and the fact that he doesn’t seem to show any remorse for what he did. Instead he appears to be laughing about it.
Thanks to @Nike Japan for this experience! pic.twitter.com/MV0UK2lZfG— Gerard Piqué (@3gerardpique) July 11, 2017
As you can tell for yourself it’s hard to deny that Pique’s wild kick was an accident. Plus, the fact that he wrote “Thanks to @Nike Japan for this experience!”serves as further proof that he didn’t see anything wrong with what he did.
As for the Japanese press and event staff in the video, they do seem to be quite uncomfortable with Pique’s seemingly random and unwarranted kick. However, all the most noise you hear come out of them is a bit of nervous laughter. Japanese Twitter users on the other hand, were, as you can see for yourself below, a lot more outspoken with their disapproval.
“If somebody got hit by that ball, they’d probably die”
“Um, This would mess you up for real”
“The event staff seems taken aback too”
“What are you laughing about?”
“What would’ve happened had the ball hit a car, and surprised the driver causing him to mess up and hit someone?”
“That’s seriously dangerous”
“If that ball hit you, you’d be dead instantly”
“What the hell are you laughing about?”
Interestingly one Japanese Twitter user chose to express his/her unhappiness with Pique’s actions in Spanish by calling the soccer player “hijo de puta” which in English means “son of a bitch.”
Although there hasn’t been any word from Nike, which seems to have been the ones behind the event that Pique was attending in the video, they’re probably not happy with this bit of bad press. On the bright side though, someone in Tokyo now owns a new soccer ball that was once used by a professional soccer player and at the center of a Twitter controversy.
Source: Goal, Kimisoku, Rocketnews24
Image: Gerard Pique Twitter
