As Germany enters the World Cup knockout rounds, starting Monday afternoon against Paraguay in Foxborough, Mass., each match going forward is potentially the national team’s final game playing in the three stripes of Adidas.
The German national soccer federation, the DFB, shocked the world in 2024 when it announced it would switch uniform suppliers after more than seven decades with the homegrown German sportswear maker. Beginning in 2027, die Mannschaft will be outfitted by Adidas’ archrival, Nike.
For 72 years, Adidas and the German national team have been synonymous. The sportswear maker was founded in the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach in 1949, and produced its first soccer boot the following year. Adidas’ formal relationship with the DFB began in 1954, the year West Germany won its first World Cup, and it lasted through all three subsequent men’s and two women’s World Cup victories to date.
“The national team plays in three stripes—that was as clear as the ball being round and a game lasting 90 minutes,” Markus Söder, minister-president of Bavaria, told Deutsche Welle at the time of the DFB announcement. “German football … is not a pawn in international corporate battles. Commerce is not everything.”
