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.