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    New Zealand’s Soccer Team to Wear Dark Shorts, Citing Period Concerns

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    The women’s soccer team said its players would not wear white shorts at the World Cup this summer, acknowledging the anxiety that some players had expressed about period leaks.For the first time, New Zealand’s women’s soccer team will not have a uniform that includes white shorts, the country’s soccer association announced on Monday, acknowledging concerns that some players have expressed about periods.White shorts have been a persistent concern for athletes who are anxious about period leaks, prompting teams and competitions to review their uniform policies in recent years. The change by New Zealand was made as women’s national soccer teams were preparing for the World Cup, which New Zealand is hosting with Australia this summer.Nike unveiled new team uniforms on Monday for the 13 women’s national teams it partners with, including New Zealand, the United States and England, whose players had asked Nike last year to swap the white shorts from their uniform. The new uniforms for England and most of the other countries Nike partners with do not have white shorts.New Zealand’s women’s national team, the Ford Football Ferns, will instead wear a white shirt with teal shorts as its main uniform and an all-black colorway with a silver fern pattern as its secondary uniform, New Zealand Football said on Monday.The new uniforms will first be used in competition for the team’s exhibition matches against Iceland and Nigeria this month.Hannah Wilkinson, a striker, said in a statement included with the federation’s announcement that the change from white shorts was “fantastic for women with any kind of period anxiety.”“In the end it just helps us focus more on performance and shows a recognition and appreciation of women’s health,” she said.England’s Football Association did not say why it swapped out white shorts for blue ones, but its players had publicly campaigned for a change.Richard Heathcote/Getty ImagesTeams and competitions, responding to a push by athletes, have increasingly recognized that players want more practical uniforms. White shorts can show period leaks and also are frequently see-through when wet.The All England Club, which hosts the Wimbledon tennis tournament, said in November that it would allow women to wear dark undershorts, a departure from its traditional all-white dress code.In March, Ireland’s women’s rugby team said that its players would wear navy shorts instead of white shorts at the Six Nations Championship, a major international competition.In February, the Orlando Pride of the National Women’s Soccer League said that it was switching from white shorts to black ones for its secondary uniforms so players would be “more comfortable and confident” when playing. The team’s main uniform is purple.“We must remove the stigma involved in discussing the health issues impacting women and menstruating nonbinary and trans athletes if we want to maximize performance and increase accessibility to sport,” the team’s general manager, Haley Carter, said in a statement at the time.Ahead of the World Cup, which runs from July 20 to Aug. 20, this push for change seemed to be reflected in the uniforms Nike unveiled on Monday for its partnering national teams: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, England, France, South Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Portugal and the United States.With the exception of Brazil, which retains white shorts for its secondary uniforms, the teams will play in colored shorts. Players on each team also have the option to play in shorts that include a liner designed by Nike to protect against period leaks.The United States women’s team played in all-white uniforms when it won the 2019 World Cup in France. The team has used both dark and white shorts for its home and away uniforms.The team’s two most recent uniforms have had dark shorts for both home and away games because of “Nike’s conscientious efforts,” Aaron Heifetz, a spokesman for the United States women’s national team, said in an email.England’s Football Association did not say why it swapped out white shorts for blue ones, but its players had publicly campaigned for a change.The association said in a statement that it wanted its players “to feel our continued support on this matter” and that their feedback would be taken into consideration.“We have appealed to international tournament organizers to keep this subject in consideration and allow for greater flexibility on kit color combinations,” the association said.During the women’s European Championship last July, the England forward Beth Mead said that the team had asked Nike to change the white shorts.“It is very nice to have an all-white kit,” she said, “but sometimes it’s not practical when it’s the time of the month.” More

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      The Inside Story of N.B.A. Players and Their Socks

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      BOSTON — Several years ago, Kevin Porter Jr., then a high school basketball star in Seattle, made a profound decision, one that would affect his life. He was creating his own team for the video game NBA 2K, and he decided to outfit one of the players in super long, over-the-calf socks.“I really liked it,” Porter said, “so I tried it in real life. And I was like, ‘Yeah, this is my new look.’ ”Porter has remained loyal to the style. Now a fourth-year guard with the Houston Rockets, he often complements his high socks by covering his knees with compression sleeves that are designed for his arms.“So my legs can stay warm,” he said. “A lot of people make fun of having high socks. But honestly, it’s kind of like a ’70s or ’80s look. I’m different, and I like expressing that.”Kevin Porter Jr., of the Houston Rockets, first experimented with high socks by putting them on players in a video game.Carmen Mandato/Getty ImagesClad in their oversize sweaters, avant-garde scarves and bespoke suits, N.B.A. players have long moonlighted as style-conscious trendsetters. Before games, arena corridors double as fashion runways. And once fans find their seats, the league’s stars function as billboards for the hottest sneakers on the market.The N.B.A., though, has seldom allowed players much wiggle room when it comes to an undervalued component of their in-game attire: socks. Players, after all, are required to wear those manufactured by Nike, which has been the league’s sock partner for six seasons.But even within that relatively confined world, players are constantly finding ways to tailor their approaches. Some pull their socks high, while others scrunch them low. Some want a brand-new pair every game, while others are fine cycling through the same laundered pairs for weeks.There are even a few players who purposely take their Nike socks, which are labeled left and right, and wear them on the wrong feet — a practice that has always puzzled Pat Connaughton of the Milwaukee Bucks.“I’ve asked, and nobody’s given me a good answer,” he said.And while it seems most players prioritize function, some favor fashion — perhaps illustrative of a generational divide.“I think there’s a culture change with the younger guys,” said Tony Nila, who has spent 30 seasons with the Rockets, including the last 16 as the team’s equipment manager. “I don’t know if they have so many sock routines or pet peeves. I think they’re more about looking good.”For decades, most players simply wore the socks that teams gave them — sometimes lots of them. Mel Davis, a forward for the Knicks and the Nets in the 1970s, was known to throw on six pairs — six! — before lacing up his sneakers, which was a source of intrigue for opponents and teammates alike.“When I hear sock stories, he’s the first one who comes to mind,” said Kenny Charles, 71, a former guard with the Buffalo Braves and Atlanta Hawks. “Everyone was responsible for their socks. And if you lost them on a road trip, you didn’t say anything. You’d just wait until shoot-around and take a pair out of someone else’s bag.”Sock protocols became more formalized in 1986, when the league created a line of products that included socks, replica jerseys, shorts and warm-ups. It did not take long for the league to mandate that its players wear socks that were produced by its sock licensee, a company called Ridgeview.In the late ’80s and early ’90s, the socks were basic. Some had a couple of stripes around the ankle. Others had the team name running up the side. In 1999, the league began using an Indiana-based company called For Bare Feet, which made socks that were easily identifiable: plush and white with a small N.B.A. logo.A Denver Nuggets player wore socks bearing stripes and the N.B.A. logo during a game in 2005.Brian Bahr/Getty Images“Great sock,” said Eric Housen, Golden State’s vice president of team operations. “Guys loved those.”Before the 2015-16 season, the N.B.A. dropped For Bare Feet in favor of Stance. The Stance socks, though more playful and vivid, were not nearly as popular.“Stiff,” Marcus Smart of the Boston Celtics said. “Hurt your feet. Wasn’t too big on them.”The Stance experiment lasted just two seasons. Philadelphia 76ers forward P.J. Tucker was not enamored with the brand. So, he procured several dozen pairs of thick, padded socks from his favorite sock purveyor, Thorlos — “Most comfortable socks ever,” he said — along with several dozen pairs from Stance, and had them delivered to a tailor for surgery: She cut them all in half, then stitched the tops of the Stance socks to the bottoms of the Thorlos socks.The result was that the Stance design and the N.B.A. logo were still visible while affording Tucker the comfort of his Thorlos down low, where it mattered. It was an ingenious way of skirting league rules.“Socks are super important, bro,” Tucker said.Nike, which did not respond to repeated requests for comment, does offer some selection within the margins of its game-sock cosmos. Its socks, which are a polyester, nylon, cotton and spandex blend, come in four lengths: no-show, quarter, crew and tall. (Housen could not think of a current player who wears the no-show socks; the last player who did, he said, may have been Luke Ridnour, a journeyman guard who announced his retirement in 2016.) Players can opt for a type of sock called “Quick,” which is thinner, or “Power,” which has more padding.And there are different sizes. When Boban Marjanovic, a 7-foot-4 center, joined the Rockets in an off-season trade, Nila, the team’s equipment manager, was grateful that he had some size XXXL socks on hand.When Boban Marjanovich was traded from the Dallas Mavericks to the Houston Rockets, the Rockets’ equipment manager was ready with the right socks.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesZion Williamson of the New Orleans Pelicans flips down the tops of his socks so the orange stripe will show.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesBut while there is flexibility in terms of the style and fit of the socks from game to game, teammates must wear the same color. As they rotate through different uniforms, some franchises mix it up: purple socks one game, black the next. Others keep it simple. Keen observers of foot fashion may have noticed, for example, that the New Orleans Pelicans strictly wear white socks, which forward Brandon Ingram prefers. Zion Williamson, Ingram’s teammate, adds pizazz by flipping down the sock tops to expose a colorful thread that runs along an inside seam.“I like the orange stripe,” he said.Of course, getting players to color-coordinate their socks can cause the occasional complication. One N.B.A. equipment manager, who requested anonymity to protect the sock-wearing behaviors of the team’s players, recalled a long-ago playoff series when the team busted out black socks for the first time. During an early timeout, one of the players opined that they must have been made of burlap: Why are we wearing these?The player was so irritated that he removed his black socks in the huddle and replaced them with white ones. The equipment manager panicked, then lopped off the top of the player’s black socks and slid them over the white ones like wristbands to obscure the clashing color — all in the middle of a playoff game.Lest anyone think the N.B.A. is lax about its sock policies, consider Smart’s experience at the start of the 2017-18 season, when Nike was the league’s new partner. For the season opener, he folded the tops of his socks down because they felt more comfortable that way, he said. The problem was that he wound up hiding the Nike swoosh.“I got a call from the league, and they said that Nike said I did it on purpose,” said Smart, who was sponsored by Adidas at the time. “So they were like, ‘You’ve got to wear your socks the right way or you’ll be fined.’ ”How much? “I didn’t want to find out,” said Smart, who now has a deal with Puma.Marcus Smart of the Boston Celtics once folded down the tops of his socks, obscuring the Nike logo. He said he was threatened with a fine.Brian Babineau/NBAE via Getty ImagesTeams typically order their socks from Nike about a year in advance. Last month, Housen ordered about 2,500 pairs of socks for Golden State — about 150 per player — for next season. Each team gets an annual stipend for Nike gear.“But based on the amount of product we need, it only covers about 20 to 25 percent of the overall spend,” said Housen, who added that game socks tend to last “as long as you launder them well.”Golden State has a warehouse in San Francisco where Housen houses heaps of team gear for players like Stephen Curry, a star who sometimes opts for crew-length socks but usually wears quarters under his ankle braces.A decent segment of the league wears two pairs. But within that subset are variations. Connaughton said he began doubling up when he was in high school because he believed it helped prevent blisters. Jabari Smith Jr., a first-year forward with the Rockets, wears a pair of Adidas socks underneath his Nike ones.Sometimes, it depends on the sneaker. Larry Nance Jr., a forward with the Pelicans, said one pair of socks typically sufficed when he wore LeBron James’s signature Nike shoes. But he wears two pairs whenever he reaches for his Air Jordan 10s, which are “a little flimsier,” he said.Tucker, who has an enormous sneaker collection, gets why all of this may sound so strange. Most people can get away with wearing crummy socks, he said. But professional athletes are different.“Your feet got to feel right,” he said. “If your feet don’t feel right, forget it.” More

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      Nigeria Adds Up the Costs of Missing the World Cup

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      Failure to qualify for Qatar has condemned Nigeria to a humbling summer instead of months of World Cup hype. Then there’s the fate of its famous jersey.In those initial moments of agony in March after Nigeria was eliminated from qualification for this year’s World Cup, the most immediate thoughts of Amaju Pinnick, the president of Nigeria’s soccer federation, were of the disappointment being felt by his 200 million countrymen in Africa’s most populous nation.He needed only to look down on the scenes unfolding inside Moshood Abiola National Stadium in Abuja, Nigeria, to see what it meant. Thousands of angry supporters had poured onto the field after the final whistle to vent their anger, knocking over the advertising boards, chasing the players from the field and clashing with security officers. “My first thought,” Pinnick said, “was to resign immediately.”But his mind quickly drifted elsewhere, too. In those first days after Nigeria’s elimination in a home-and-home playoff against Ghana, Pinnick said he would wake up in the middle of the night thinking about another group feeling the sting of the team’s failure.“Oh what have we done,” he said, “to Nike.”For any country accustomed to attending the World Cup, the consequences of missing the tournament are substantial. The United States Soccer Federation stumbled through just such a soccer catastrophe in 2017, and Italy has now done it in two World Cup cycles in a row.For Nigeria, a leading light of African soccer that until this year had failed to qualify for the World Cup only once since 1994, the emotional and financial cost of elimination may be best told through the demise of a single deal: the carefully calibrated plan, worth millions of dollars and priceless publicity, linked to the release of a new national team jersey made by Nike.Nigeria’s jersey for the 2018 World Cup had been a breakout star, creating a frenzy and the type of buzz more expected from an appearance by one of the game’s star players than the arrival of a piece of apparel. Brightly colored and featuring a design that set it apart from the more staid, conservative offerings of most of the other teams at the tournament in Russia, Nigeria’s jersey became a must-have that summer, selling out almost immediately.Nigeria national soccer gear in London in 2018. It didn’t stay in stores for long.Frank Augstein/Associated PressNike received at least three million orders for the $90 shirt even before it went on sale. Lines formed at the company’s flagship stores in London and other cities on the day of its release. When it was finally made available online, it sold out in three minutes.Four years later, Nike and Nigeria — whose federation officials have sought to take full advantage of their brand through their relationship with the company — were hoping to build on that success with a new design this summer.“Nike has been very religious about us,” Pinnick said. “I feel very, very bad — I feel like crying when you mention Nike. They went all the way to bringing out what would have been the best jersey again in this tournament.”The World Cup is a major sales moment for Nike, which outfits some of the tournament’s most prominent teams, including the current champion, France, but also the United States, England and Brazil, which has won more titles than any other nation.Designing and manufacturing World Cup jerseys is not a short process, either; it typically takes about two years before the products appear in stores. Pinnick’s reaction, then, was understandable: Nigeria’s failure to qualify will mean a colossal loss in what the soccer federation could have expected to reap from its share of sales, he said. (Fans of the shirt will still get a chance to own one: The shirt will be released, presumably amid much less excitement, in September.)Pinnick estimated that as many as five million jerseys might have been sold after qualification, though it is unclear how many jerseys Nike was planning to produce; the company declined multiple requests to comment for this article.Joe Aribo and Nigeria lost to Ecuador, 1-0, in a friendly on Thursday in New Jersey. It was the team’s second defeat in a week on its United States tour.Tim Nwachukwu/Getty ImagesThrough its contract with Nike, Nigeria was entitled to a royalty of about 8 percent of each sale, Pinnick suggested. It would also have received a further $1 million in bonus fees from the company for making the World Cup. Those payouts, as well as additional eight-figure paydays from FIFA just for playing in the tournament, most likely would have meant a doubling of the Nigerian federation’s annual revenues of $20 million — a figure that was less than a tenth of what the biggest national soccer associations in South America and Europe generate.Shehu Dikko, the vice president of the federation, said a significant amount of the money earned through qualification would have been allocated before the tournament, on items like player bonuses, tuneup matches and training camps. (The team is currently in North America: It lost to Mexico on Saturday in Texas and again to Ecuador at Red Bull Arena in New Jersey on Thursday night.) “It is a huge financial blow for us,” he said, “and we have to recover.”There is another element of Nigeria’s failure, though, that is much harder to quantify. Over the decades, the Nigeria men’s soccer team, particularly when it is performing at major tournaments, has become a rallying point like no other for a population cleaved by social, ethnic and religious differences.“Football in Nigeria is life — it’s more than anybody can explain with words,” Dikko said. “You have to feel it. Nigeria has over 500 tribes, so many traditions, but football is the only activity that breaks through all of our fault lines. Once there is a football, everybody is a Nigerian. Nobody cares who you are, what you do or what language you speak. So football is more than just a game for us. It’s what binds this country together.”“Football is more than just a game for us,” one Nigerian official said of the sport and the national team. “It’s what binds this country together.”Afolabi Sotunde/ReutersThat level of interest and passion, though, means there also is a sharper focus on the performance of the federation.Under Pinnick, who assumed the role in 2014 and is the longest-serving soccer president in Nigeria’s history and who is also a member of FIFA’s governing council, Nigeria has had a mixed record. While he claims credit for modernizing the federation and attracting new sponsors, his tenure has failed to yield any major titles. A round of 16 elimination in the most recent edition of the Africa Cup of Nations — months before the team’s World Cup ouster — was its worst performance in that event since 1984. That came after a third-place finish in the previous edition and two consecutive catastrophic qualification campaigns in which Nigeria missed the competition in 2015 and 2017.Despite his initial impulse to resign in March, Pinnick now says he will stay on through the end of his term later this year. Not everyone supports the decision.Days after its World Cup exit, with Pinnick at his lowest, dozens of placard-holding protesters gathered outside the Nigerian headquarters in Abuja, calling for his ouster. Pinnick said the protest was not what it seemed; he suggested the crowd had been assembled — and paid — by opponents who have been trying to stymie his efforts since the day he first stepped into office.“They are professional placard carriers — you employ them, you rent them,” Pinnick said of the group that called for his ouster. “If you ask the guy why they are carrying the placards, they say they don’t know. They rent them for as low as 10 cents, 20 cents. People are hungry.”A few days later, there was another demonstration, more placards. This time the messages were different. They called on Pinnick to stay on. More

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      Soccer Samples Streetwear and Likes the Fit

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      Juventus reimagined its look, P.S.G. partnered with Jordan Brand, and now Arsenal and Inter Milan are following suit. But soccer’s interest in design has little to do with the sport.The lights at the Allianz Stadium cut out, and the music swelled. In the darkness, a small patch in the middle of the field seemed to glow. The center circle started to pulse and ripple. And then the grass itself appeared to get pulled away, as if it were nothing more than a tablecloth. Three words ran around the electronic advertising boards: “History. Passion. Lols.”The extravagant buildup did not seem to match the occasion. Juventus was at home to Genoa that night, a run-of-the-mill Serie A game. It was late October 2019, much too early in the season for the title to be decided or a trophy to be won. What mattered, though, was not what Juventus was playing for, but what the team was playing in.That night, Cristiano Ronaldo and his teammates would showcase a special edition jersey, designed in collaboration with its apparel partner, Adidas, and Palace, the maverick British skate and streetwear brand.The design toyed with the history and passion of Juventus, incorporating the team’s traditional bianconero stripes and the disruptive touches that had made Palace a streetwear phenomenon. The team’s logos and the player’s numbers were displayed in an acidic green. Toward the bottom, the stripes started to pixelate.The jersey was greeted as a masterpiece, but Juventus would never wear it again. By the time Ronaldo and his teammates took to the field against Torino a few days later, they were back in their regular uniforms. It did not matter. Later that week, the Palace jersey came online — or, as the streetwear world would put it, dropped.It sold out in 12 hours.Soccer goes popP.S.G. and Jordan Brand released their first collaboration in 2018.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA couple of years earlier, Juventus had held a lavish reception at the Museum of Science and Technology in Milan. The guest list included players past and present, but also pop-culture fixtures like Giorgio Moroder, the pioneering music producer, and the model and actress Emily Ratajkowski.The party was arranged to herald the dawn of a new era for the club. Its team was in the middle of an unmatched period of success on the field, establishing a run of dominance in Serie A, however, it risked being left behind by its Continental rivals. To remain competitive, it needed to close the revenue gap on clubs like Barcelona, Real Madrid and Manchester United, its chairman, Andrea Agnelli said. To do that, he was convinced, Juventus had to become “more pop.”He is not the only executive in European soccer to have that thought. In 2018, fans lined up around the block outside the Parc des Princes to get their hands on the first drop of a collaboration between Paris St.-Germain and Jordan Brand, a subsidiary of its primary apparel partner, Nike. Earlier this year, Arsenal unveiled a collaboration with 424, a streetwear brand based in Los Angeles.As with the audience for Juventus’s collection with Palace, the core market for these collaborations is not the club’s fans. It is not even, necessarily, fans of the sport. The collections are not intended to be worn as soccer products or as declarations of loyalty to a team; the tie-ins are not, as they are often presented, attempts by Europe’s insatiable superclubs to sell more tickets or to pick up more fans.The Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli oversaw a complete rebranding of the club.Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“A lot of the people buying those P.S.G. Jordan shirts will not care about the team’s league position,” said Jordan Wise, a founder of Gaffer magazine and the creative agency False 9. “Many of them may not even like football.” That is precisely their value to clubs: an entirely untapped market, one not subject to the vicissitudes and tribalism that affect soccer fans.“Working with streetwear brands gives the clubs access to a completely different space,” Wise said. “But to do that, they have to think and look different: less like clubs, and more like sportswear brands.”No team has embraced that shift quite like Juventus. In 2016, at Agnelli’s instigation, the club decided to embark on a comprehensive rebrand. Every aspect of the team’s identity would be in play, including, most controversially, its iconic crest, a symbol that had roots stretching back more than a century.“It was more than just a change in the badge,” said Giorgio Ricci, Juventus’s chief financial officer. “It was a new visual identity, one which would enable us to be seen as innovative, one step ahead.”The club put the rebrand idea out to a number of marketing agencies, and eventually selected a pitch from Interbrand, a longstanding partner. Its approach had been risky: After consulting the company’s global network of creatives, Lidi Grimaldi, the managing director of Interbrand’s Milan bureau, decided against presenting the club with a suite of options, spreading their bets in the hopes that one caught the imagination.Instead, she said, Interbrand decided to go in with one design. Though the company had previously helped tweak the Juventus crest, making it a little less ornate, altering the color scheme a touch, this time Interbrand would suggest something more revolutionary. “Something really bold,” she said. Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMarco Bertorello/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThey did not have much time. Because Juventus and Adidas needed to start work on the club’s jerseys for the next season, Interbrand had less than a month to get its ideas together. Rather than something that looked like a soccer crest, it designed a logo that had “more in common with Google or Apple or Nike,” Grimaldi said.There would be no depiction of a charging bull, as there had been on every version of the crest for more than a century. There would not even be a crest, as such: just a sleek and stylized J, a design that would form the centerpiece of and inspiration for an updated visual identity. That was no accident. “The whole strategy was to widen the spectrum of activities without abandoning the club’s core, which is football,” she said.To present the idea to the Juventus board, Interbrand made a short film, one that offered a glimpse into what this bold new future might look like: that stylized J emblazoned on cafes and hotels, adorning events, used in collaborations with cutting-edge fashion brands. The Juventus executives, including Agnelli, were thrilled, Grimaldi said. This was precisely the sort of sea change they had been seeking. The main response, she said, was: “Wow.”The club, of course, knew such a drastic change would not be universally welcomed. When the new logo was revealed, the reaction from fans was — at best — mixed. Juventus felt it had no choice but to ride out the storm.“We needed a new identity that could change the perception of Juventus among different stakeholders,” Ricci said. “One that could enlarge the scope and potential targets of our business. We needed a new identity that was suitable not just for core customers, but for new audiences, something that could be a trigger for creators.”Perhaps the best measure of its success came on Tuesday. After a similarly intensive design period, Inter Milan — Juventus’s fierce domestic rival — presented its own new crest, a simplified version of the badge that has graced the club’s jerseys for decades. Imitation, after all, is the sincerest form of flattery.The soccer entertainment complexFew clubs can match Manchester United’s revenue off the field.Oli Scarff/ReutersFor years, Manchester United has been held up as soccer’s gold standard in converting the sport’s unparalleled popularity into cold, hard cash.The partnership model it pioneered, combining 25 official club partners with a jumble of regional partners around the world, might have made it an easy target for satire — all those tractor and noodle endorsements — but it has also turned the club into a financial powerhouse, capable of earning a profit even during the coronavirus pandemic.Increasingly, though, the consumption habits of younger people are making that approach seem outdated. “We’re seeing a move away from the licensing model,” Wise said. “We know that Generation Z and millennials hate being sold to. That means it’s no longer enough to plaster a club’s badge on something and assume fans will buy it out of loyalty.”Instead, he said, partnerships must feel “authentic,” and the content used to promote them must “tell stories.” That authenticity was the logic behind the Juventus rebrand, not only of its crest but of the club’s whole visual persona, from its social media — using a bespoke font — to its branding.“It was about placing soccer in the broader entertainment framework,” Ricci said. “We see our competition not just as clubs, but things like the gaming industry.”For partners, the appeal is obvious. Soccer has a reach that no other aspect of culture can match. Cristiano Ronaldo has more followers on Instagram than anyone else on the planet. Lionel Messi might trail his rival there, but it will be some solace that he is, at least, ahead of Beyoncé.Cristiano Ronaldo is a global brand in his own right, with 273 million followers on Instagram.Marco Bertorello/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLikewise, Juventus has a name recognition that can supercharge a brand like Palace. The difference is that, increasingly, soccer has to give a little, too. It has to accept the principles of what Grimaldi called “strategic design,” the idea that design itself can change consumer behavior and expectations.“The rebrand was not a way of being cooler or more contemporary,” Grimaldi said. “It was a chance to show you understand the verbal and visual codes you have to adopt if you want to be understood in other spaces. To do work with Palace, for example, you have to adopt the design codes of their world.”It is, though, a slow burn. Four years since its rebrand, Juventus is not in a position to pinpoint any immediate financial boost, which has traditionally been the primary motivation and metric for anything any soccer club does. When looking at the club’s books, Ricci said, it is hard to isolate what is a consequence of the rebrand, and what is a result of winning trophies or signing Cristiano Ronaldo.He is, though, “absolutely convinced” that it was worth it. Internally, the new identity gave the club a sense of direction, he said. Externally, the outrage over the new badge subsided fairly quickly: Signing Ronaldo and picking up another handful of Serie A titles meant the club’s traditional fans did not feel alienated.But at the same time, it meant that Juventus had become something more than a team, something more like a sportswear brand, too.It is still occasionally possible to buy one of those original pixelated, acid green, special-edition Palace jerseys in streetwear’s thriving resale market. Prices start at several hundred dollars, far more than even the newest Juventus jersey. And how the team is doing on the field makes not the slightest bit of difference. More