It is just a football match but in Germany it is already being hailed as the beginning
of the end of the Battle of the Boot.
Kick off between teams from Puma and adidas is set for Monday and if all goes well —
no fouls, no dives it may end the extraordinary dynastic feud that has ripped apart a
small Bavarian village, and the global sports market, for half a century.
Once upon a time, back in the 1920s, the Dasslers were a happy family. Two sons of a
master cobbler, Adolf (Adi) and Rudolf (Rudi) Dassler showed that they had a talent
for turning leather into highly effective sports shoes.
Adi, in particular, designed spiked running shoes that were used by Jesse Owens in the
1936 Olympics in Berlin.
During the Second World War, however, something soured the fraternal relationship. “It
was like a marriage that goes terribly, terribly wrong,” said Ernst Dittrich, head of
the town archives in Herzogenaurach, northern Bavaria.
One anecdote suggests that relations broke when Adi and his family were sheltering from
an Allied air raid. “There come those Schweinehunde,” he shouted when his
brother’s family entered the shelter.
Later he tried to explain that the “pig dogs” insult referred to the RAF bombers rather
than his relations, but the damage had apparently been done.
There were storiesof soured romances between members of the two wings of the family but
the most likely explanation is that the feud was rooted in the later war years, when Rudi
became a US prisoner of war.
By the time he returned home, Adi was firmly in control of the factory and was unwilling
to make much space for him.
Enraged, Rudi set up his own factory on the other side of the river and called it Puma.
Adi named his factory adidas and the fight was on for global domination of the sporting
footwear market.
Adidas developed removable studs that helped West Germany to win the World Cup for the
first time on a slippery pitch in Berne, Switzerland, in 1954 a deeply emotional moment
for all Germans and it gave Adi the edge in the competition.
He laid claim to the title of “best sports shoe manufacturer in the world” but Puma
challenged the move in court, and won.
Adi responded by hiring an adidas fan, the local fishmonger, to paint the slogan on his
mobile van and park it permanently outside Rudi’s office window. Since then every World
Cup has been a tussle between the two companies for sponsorship rights.
The feud has split not only the sporting community but the village itself. Workers are
given discounts on the sportswear that they manufacture and, as a result, one half of
the community wears adidas trainers and T shirts while the other half wears Puma.
In the worst years particularly after the legendary Pelé scored in the 1970 World Cup
final, clinching the glory for Brazil while wearing Puma boots fathers would disown
their daughters for marrying into a Puma family.
Pubs were aligned to adidas or Puma and cold shouldered anyone who broke the dress code.
The local school splintered into gangs connected to the two rival companies.
The mood has softened in recent years. Both Adi and Rudi are dead and family
participation in the two companies is now minimal. In fact, many of the employees are no
longer even German and much of the poison has gone out of the Battle of the Boot.
