By Mark Baber
January 5 – Herbert Hainer has excited world-wide attention after the Adidas boss criticised the playing style of Manchester United – the club with whom he signed a world record £75m a year kit deal in 2014.
In an interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung picked up in the UK, The Sun accused Hainer of giving United manager Louis van Gaal “a kicking for boring football after, in the course of a wide-ranging interview, he answered a question about the high cost of sponsoring Manchester United by saying, ‘That is always a matter of supply and demand. Business with Manchester United is going very well, we are selling more shirts than expected and the foreign share is 60%. We are satisfied, even if the way Man United is playing right now is not exactly what we want to see.'”
Hainer’s comments have been widely interpreted as putting additional pressure on the United manager, who has been under attack in the British media, despite the team’s improved performance in beating Swansea 2-1 at the weekend and ending an eight-game winless run.
Given that Manchester United’s Old Trafford has seen the fewest goals of any Premier League side this season, and the club has been knocked out of the Champions League and is lying in 5th place in the league, nine points behind leader Arsenal, Hainer’s comments are perhaps understandable but probably not too much should be read into them in the context of a relaxed interview in which the Adidas boss (who is also on the board of Bayern Munich) was primarily concerned to trumpet his company’s achievements during 2015.
In the interview Hainer explained the mistakes that Adidas had made during 2014, including the failure to develop an innovative new shoe in time for the World Cup, and how these had been corrected in 2015 so that the company’s shares had gone from the worst to best performing on the Dax.
According to Hainer, the company’s order books are now full for the first half of 2016, there will be a double digit growth in sales in the USA and business is good in China, despite the turndown there.
Hainer hailed the company’s relationship with the DFB and defended Adidas’ reputation, denying the company had been involved in any questionable activities and maintaining that politicians, the public and sponsors would ensure FIFA was reformed to limit terms in office and ensure transparency in salaries and electoral processes so that no room for corruption would be left.
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