The Great German Football Shirt Scandal

How a single font brought about a ban on the national kit

Let’s snub our noses at the rules today and start this article with a long sentence: How did it come to pass that a country carrying the guilty burden of genocide ends up giving its national football team’s shirt a font that resembles the logo of one of the units instrumental in carrying out that genocide?

The mind goes boggle-woggle a bit at this story. It involves the sports brand Adidas, the German Football Association (DFB) and FIFA (the global governing body for football… that’s soccer, to my one Stateside reader Kyle Wells). As always when things go somewhat pear-shaped, companies and organisations start blaming each other. Adidas says it’s the DFB’s fault, the DFB says, “Oooooh no, it’s FIFA’s fault,” and FIFA, because it’s filthy rich and corrupt, says nothing because it’s too busy counting all the blood money it received from dodgy dictators to host FIFA competitions in.

This is how football works.

So, what’s going on? Let’s break it down and see if you would have ended up in this mess or saved everyone involved from looking like a bunch of Nazis

Have you ever:

1. Paid attention in history class for even a minute?