Sanjay Sathya

Why Adidas Put Bellingham and Yamal at the Bottom of Stairs in New UCL Ad

Adidas, Barcelona, Champions League, Jude Bellingham, Lamine Yamal, Lionel Messi, Real Madrid, Zinedine Zidane

German clothing giant, Adidas have an age old association with football. Their recent iconic announcement marking the 25th year anniversary with Uefa for the Champions League ball supply, had an interesting element of marketing and momentary greatness. Adidas, released a photo of multiple legends under a single roof appearing for the unveiling of the newly designed ball.

Adidas started their partnership with UEFA for the Champions League balls in 2001. They redefined the ball designs by adapting the star-based UCL logo on the ball and have constantly maintained that across seasons. The balls are known under the brand name, Adidas Finale, and have been used in all stages of the competition, from the playoffs to the finals.

They recently extended their contract in 2024, for another three years, confirming the star based balls until the 2027 season atleast. To celebrate 25 years of their partnership, Adidas brought legends across times, who had created countless memories in the competition at different timelines, with the common thing between all of them being the Adidas finale ball. Their unveiling photo featured Zinedine Zidane, Toni Kroos, Mohamed Salah, Jude Bellingham, Ousmane Dembele, Lamine Yamal and Lionel Messi.

The photo had every one of them united, but not captured together. Adidas might have edited the seperate photos of everybody and put them in the collage. Fans called it out as the coldest photo of all time, with past legends and potential future legends in the same frame.

Adidas promotionally placed the past and present legends in the top of the stairs and the future legendary prospects in the bottom, about to take their places. This was symbolic to each individual’s stature, as Yamal is seen as a heir to Messi and Jude Bellingham is to Zidane. Incidentally, both wear the same jersey number as their legendary counterparts.

Real Madrid had the highest representatives, with three men having featured for the royal whites in the Competition. Zidane has four Champions League in association with Real madrid both as a player and a manager, while Kroos has five in whites and one in red, and Jude Bellingham with one, which he recently won in his debut season at Madrid. Zidane and Kroos have been long time ambassadors of the Adidas brand, while Jude is the latest entrant.

Adidas, a very good reader of audience pulse, used two of their main men, Messi and Yamal, by bringing them close in another photo seperately. They greeted them with the caption “10🤝10”, symbolising the past and future No.10 wizards of Barcelona. The photo has rapidly surfaced on Barcelona Twitter, with fans making resemblance to the 2007 photo of Messi holding a baby Yamal.

Lamine Yamal, is seen as the future face for Adidas, following the footsteps of Messi. Adidas had acquired his contract, right away when he was coming off the age as a promising youngster, in February 2024.

Adidas had missed on the kit designs of many teams across europe’s top 5 leagues, with fans calling out the designs as bad and horrendous. But when it comes to marketing and ball designs, Adidas stand solely at the top of the world with little to no competition.

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