Adidas, the manufacturer of equipment for the German national teams, decided yesterday to stop the sale of personalized jerseys (with name and jersey number of your choice). According to German media, the sports brand is also suspending the delivery of shirts with jersey number 44. These shirts are extra sensitive, because the double 4 shows many visual similarities with the abbreviation SS, including the ‘Schutzstaffel’ is especially known.
After that criticism, the German Football Association is now intervening and there is now also a new design for the shirt number 4, in coordination with the European football association UEFA. “We do not want to provide a platform for discussion,” the DFB explains in a press release. The German Football Association also says that the similarity to the Nazi badge was not noticed at any point in the creation and approval process of the shirts for the European Championship.
“Attempts to promote divisive or exclusionary views are not part of our values as a brand,” spokesperson Oliver Brüggen told the DPA news agency. “People from about a hundred countries work at Adidas. Our company is committed to promoting diversity and inclusion, and as a company we actively campaign against xenophobia, anti-Semitism, violence and hatred in all forms.”
Germany is the host country for this year’s European Football Championship, which will take place from June 14 to July 14.
About ten days ago, there was already a commotion in Germany when it became known that the German sports brand Adidas will no longer manufacture the team shirts from 2027. In three years’ time, the American Nike logo will appear on the shirts of the German national team, marking the end of a collaboration of more than seventy years.
Adidas is not the only sports brand that is concerned about the design of football jerseys. Competitor Nike also incurred the wrath of an entire nation because it changed the colors of the flag on the England jerseys. This even led to a political issue in the United Kingdom last month.
Tags: Number German jersey problems German Football Federation
