Did Hector Bellerin switch to Nike?
The Arsenal defender appears to have terminated his contracts with adidas and PUMA
Sports
May 27th, 2020
May 27th, 2020
Hector Bellerin, 25-year-old Arsenal defender, surprised us again: at the resumption of post-Covid training, the Spanish showed up at Arsenal Football Club Training Ground with a pair of pink Nike Mercurial Vapor 13 Elite. Despite having already been seen training with the same shoes - but of another color - during one of the last pre-pandemic training on March 2, the real anomaly is that this time it was the same player who posted a post on his Instagram account showing his new silhouette, as if to publicly announce the start of a new sponsorship contract with the American brand.
If on the ''performance'' side the Nike/Bellerin combination could not make anyone jump from the armchair, off the field we should instead prepare for a move that would bring benefits to both sides: the ''Swoosh'' would be very comfortable to have in your own portfolio a trend-setter who has already shown he can influence the z-generation through 'different' concepts and ideals from those of the average footballer; is the kind of ''alternative'' sportsman that all brands would need, one who spends himself personally to talk about discrimination, racism, depression, politics and independence - given his Catalan origins -, a person who makes sport is his main reason for earning but at the same time he is interested in fashion and art and is able to make himself appreciated because of his personality and not necessarily for his ballistic skills. In short, it is a figure who can abandon the idea of "average footballer" to reach the "modern footballer" step, the one with a more complete view of the world and with a "new" consciousness and ''different'' able to feed on issues other than those of football.
Given his passion for fashion instead, Bellerin could take advantage of Nike (and Jordan) in his favor; this is the sports brand that most of all has approached fashion through collaborations and research of the heritage, and which could make available to him a vast archive to compose his outfits, an opportunity that Hector should not miss.
The contractual situation regarding the Spanish defender technical sponsor has never been very clear: Transfermarkt, authoritative site for statistics and information on football, reports that Bellerin would still be under contract with PUMA, but the last appearance of the player with German brand shoes dates back to November 29, 2019, when he took the field with a pair of PUMA King Pro total black, the only ones used since the beginning of the 2019/2020 season.
It seems that Bellerin in recent years has followed the technical sponsor of the team he played for: until 2014 Arsenal wore Nike and at the feet of the then-young Hector rotated Mercurial Vapor or Tiempo. A few months after the start of the 2014-2015 season - with the Gunners who in the meantime had entered into a five-year contract with PUMA - the French also began to dress the same brand, quickly becoming one of the main faces of the advertising campaigns both of the London team than PUMA itself.
In the current season Arsenal switched to adidas and peeking into the French player's IG account anomalies began to appear: although in the game photographs it always appears with PUMA, since the day of training resumption in July Bellerin shows himself out-of-the-pitch with a pair of Converse, a brand owned by Nike, suggesting some contractual disputes. In fact, after a short period spent with PUMA ''blackout'' - total black shoes that do not suggest the silhouette design - the full back begins to wear adidas X, precisely following the technical sponsor of Arsenal.
The last ''real'' image in which Bellerin wants to demonstrate his belonging to the brand with the three-stripes is the post published on March 19 (despite two weeks before he had been spotted on the field with Mercurial), the day of his 25th birthday in which he is photographed on a tennis court with a couple of Stan Smith; from this moment forward the relationship between Nike and the player seems - apparently - to be fortified: on April 7 he gets photographed off the field with a pair of very recognizable Converse and just yesterday he decides to publish the photo with the aforementioned Mercurial Vapor. For now, neither the brand nor the footballer have officially outsourced the start of a real sponsorship contract but, if so, let's get ready to see some good ones.
