Adidas chooses France to unveil the new football shirt of the Algerian national team

Adidas hosted a private gala to unveil the new team uniform, also known as the ‘kit’, of the Algerian national football team in France’s southern port city of Marseille, heralding the event as a success ‘in every respect’.

Given the demographic transformation of France, which has the largest Muslim population in all of Europe, Adidas naturally felt France was an appropriate place to celebrate the unveiling.

Speaking about Marseille as a venue, Valentin Schmitt, territory manager for France at Prod Direct Soccer, said: “It was an obvious choice as it is the French city with the largest Algerian community. Marseille is a real football city: launching the new Algeria shirt there made sense.”

As Le Provence reported: “On Saturday evening, a small part of the Cours Honoré d’Estienne d’Orves took on an oriental atmosphere for one evening. Tents, traditional carpets, decorations, music, food… Algerian culture was wonderfully well represented.”

“We are a sporty city that loves football and has a strong Algerian diaspora. It is an Algerian atmosphere with couscous,” said one participant.

“We wanted to work locally in every sense of the word. Even in terms of organization, since KoolGang, an agency from Marseille, supervised the event,” says Gauthier Denglos, football account activation manager at Adidas. “This happened in the same way we had prepared the campaign between Algeria and Marseille. We had a common desire to draw attention to this country by making the link between culture and sport. All this in close cooperation with the Algerian Federation, which allowed us to achieve all this.”

Adidas employed rappers such as Algérino and YouTuber Mohamed Henni to participate in the event.

However, multiculturalism in Marseille is not just about couscous and football shirt parties. it is also one of France’s poorest cities, which has become the scene of a raging drug war. Last week a The 15-year-old was stabbed 50 times and burned alive after being hired by DZ’s Algerian mafia to attack a rival. Just a few days later, a 14-year-old shot an innocent delivery man in a retaliatory attack after refusing to drive the 14-year-old to kill a member of the “Black clan.”

However, companies like Adidas do not focus on this violence for obvious reasons. The company went to X to advertise its jersey in French.

“This sweater. It’s us. It’s you,” Adidas France wrote.