Telekom Goes Ball Crazy in Berlin

For international soccer players, the World Cup is the highest point of their playing days. Whether they win or lose there, an appearance for their country at the global soccer spectacle is usually the pinnacle of their careers.

So it is rather apt that with so many players arriving in Germany next summer in pursuit of that lofty achievement, the host nation should go to great lengths -- or to be more precise, heights -- to shout from the highest point that this is the greatest soccer show on earth.

And that is why Deutsche Telekom is going to stick a big soccer ball on top of Berlin's iconic television tower.

The 368-meter (1,207-foot) tall spire with the glittering bauble on the top is Germany's highest building and, with a good seven months to go before the World Cup actually kicks off, the owners of the tower want to mark the event by turning the spherical section into a magenta ball.

Other landmarks targeted for Telekom twist

And the promotion, once the plan is approved, is unlikely to stop there. The 32-meter square ball atop the tower may be just one of a number of globes getting the Telekom treatment in the run up to the World Cup.

"The television tower is not the only Berlin landmark which will be used in the campaign for the World Cup if the plan is approved," Deutsche Telekom's Matthias Schumann told Bild tabloid.

Although nothing is confirmed, Berliners must be cringing at the idea of a pink soccer ball replacing the glass dome on top of the Bundestag or a magenta and white covering adorning the roof of the Sony Center in Potsdamer Platz.