With the United States Men’s National team facing a huge challenge against Portugal today, the fine folks at Samsung Mobile Arabia wanted to show their support for the red, white, and blue. That’s all well and good, but unfortunately, they made a crucial mistake: they wished “best of luck” to “Landon Donovan and the USA team.” This, of course, is a problem because Landon Donovan did not make the USMNT roster for the World Cup. Donovan’s dismissal from the team was a pretty big deal going into the Cup, so it’s a bit surprising that the person in charge of Samsung’s Twitter account wasn’t aware of this.
It’s worth noting that since leaving the team, Donovan has joined ESPN’s World Cup announcing crew. So if you want to be really charitable about this, it’s possible that Samsung was wishing Donovan good luck in the announcing booth, while separately hoping that the USMNT would be able to come up with a victory, but that seems unlikely. The attached image of Donovan as a soccer cyborg of sorts makes it quite clear that Samsung genuinely thought Donovan would be on the pitch for the US today.
At least this isn’t as bad as when they wished George Gervin and the Spurs good luck against Harold Miner and the Heat.