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Entrepreneur Adolf Dassler with players Franz Beckenbauer and Uli Hoeneß 1974

Photo:

Horstmüller / IMAGO

The German Football Association, DFB for short, has announced a turning point. After more than 70 years in which the Adidas company from Herzogenaurach was able to equip the players of the German national teams with shoes, jerseys and all sorts of equipment, the US company Nike is to equip all DFB national teams from 2027.

A company that became famous with basketball shoes is to supply the Germans in the future. According to the DFB, the Americans “made by far the best economic offer.”

So once again it's about money - and by no means about jersey colors. By far the most hideous but also funniest national team jersey since the invention of the offside rule had just got the German fans in the most wonderful European Championship excitement: with a kit for away games that shimmered in a color dream of Angela Merkel purple and Barbie and Ken pink. For a moment it seemed as if the football association wanted to make a wonderfully crazy statement of metrosexual cosmopolitanism.

In reality, the officials probably just wanted to make their fans feel good about saying goodbye to the traditional supplier. Is the move to Nike a case of treason, as Economics Minister Robert Habeck suggests when he castigates the DFB for a lack of “local patriotism”? Will German fans throw basketballs onto the field in the future to protest against the officials' greed for money? Is it really the case that “you can hardly imagine the German jersey without the three stripes,” as Habeck says? Oh well.

The truth is that the Germans have already played under a foreign flag: in 1970, the British manufacturer Umbro provided them with jerseys. The truth is that the jerseys ultimately come neither from Germany nor the USA - but from Vietnam, Indonesia, China.

It is not expected that athletes will play better in Nike shoes. No one questioned her; the plan is to sedate them with money. Until they say to the DFB bosses in football fever the sentence that is attributed to the national team coach Helmut Schön: "I'll go completely chloroform with you."

By the way, Adi Dassler, the founder of Adidas, is said to have once said: "A bad idea is still better than no idea at all." Unfortunately, greed isn't even an idea.