What’s the Italian translation for ‘Haka’?

A rather bizarre showing last week in a Serie A league match on Thursday night which saw Italian giants AC Milan host Carpi. They say the home team should always try and put on a show for their fans but Milan managed to take it to a whole other level. A video taken from the pre-match preparations depicted both the Milan and Carpi team run out on to the pitch with the Carpi team lining up opposite the Milan team who had stood in a choreographed formation and what followed will surely go down in football fails history. The Milan players then started to perform a very dodgy and awkward version of the ‘Haka’ dubbed the “Tekitanka” and you don’t need Italian translation services to tell you this did not go down well.

It turns out that the Tekitanka was performed not by the actual Milan players but rather actors which were made to look like the players and that this was in fact all a big publicity stunt by the clubs sponsor the skincare company Nivea. The words “uomini questo e il vostro ritual” was seen across the stadiums advertisement boards, the English translation is “Men, this is your ritual” with the players acting out washing their faces and applying the cream instead of the actual battle cry. The Haka is a traditional war cry or dance performed by the Maori’s of New Zealand. The dance was usually performed by warriors before battle and has been used and made famous worldwide by the New Zealand national rugby team the All Blacks who perform it before a match to strike fear into their opponents.

Here’s how the AC Milan ‘actors’ performed:

 

As you could imagine there has been a major backlash to both Nivea and AC Milan which has seen people on social media declare the stunt as a ‘cheap rip-off’, ‘fake’ and ‘culturally insensitive’ amongst others which has led Nivea to issue an apology. A statement from Nivea’s parent company Beiersdorf sent to Mashable Australia read “NIVEA Men has organized a one off activity before the match AC Milan – Carpi on April 21. Actors were wearing the shirts of AC Milan and have performed a dance – inspired by the HAKA Maori dance. It was never our intention to offend anyone. We are truly sorry if this has happened.”

Maybe they should have sought professional localisation services first or maybe not done it at all.

Here’s how the ‘real’ Haka is done performed by the All Blacks.