No matter how Germany fares during Euro 2024 over the coming three weeks, an era of sorts will end for the host country¡¯s football team and one of its best-known brands: Die Mannschaft will play its last European championship tournament match in Adidas uniforms.
Adidas¡¯ loss of such a prominent sponsorship to archrival Nike, announced earlier this year, would¡¯ve been unthinkable not long ago, when the team and the sportswear maker were bound together by what CEO Bjorn Gulden once described as an almost ¡°emotionally inseparable,¡± seven-decade relationship.
Yet setbacks and stumbles piled up for Adidas before Gulden arrived last year, ranging from a boycott of Western brands in China to the demise of the company¡¯s partnership with rapper Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) after his anti-Semitic comments.
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