When Spider-Man was on Atletico Madrid's jerseys

Today finally comes out in cinemas around the world Spider-Man: No Way Home, the long-awaited second chapter on the Marvel superhero, and maybe Tom Holland can finally rest after an endless wandering to promote the film. Only in the last few days in fact Spider-Man had to climb to the top of the stands of the Parc des Princes with the Eiffel Tower in the background and Tom Holland first tried to steal Messi's jersey in the locker room and then to convince Mbappé to go and play for Tottenham. Paris Saint Germain in fact, in the now unstoppable attempt to become the Fortnite of soccer, invited the English actor on the occasion of the Parisian stop of the promotional tour of Spiderman: Far From Home. A circumstance not to be missed to unite two giant brands of entertainment, Marvel and soccer superstars, and a move that shows how much the two universes are getting irrevocably closer. 

But PSG didn't actually invent anything, and Tom Holland wasn't the first Spider-Man to wear a soccer jersey with his name on the back. On the contrary, Atletico Madrid even dedicated a special jersey adorned with the world's most famous spider web to his predecessor in the Tobey Maguire suit. It was 2004 and Atletico had as a sponsor nothing less than Columbia Pictures, the American production company that at that time was living a great period in terms of titles and receipts thanks to xXx, Men in Black and Bad Boys. But above all by obtaining from a lawsuit with MGM about James Bond the rights to exploit the Spider Man franchise, which became in the hands of Sam Raimi the biggest success in the history of Columbia.

So when two years later the cast began the long promotion for the second, highly anticipated, chapter Columbia took the ball and took advantage of its sponsorship with Atletico to create one of the strangest jerseys ever appeared on a soccer field. Made by Nike in the template of the Total 90 kit, it had at its center a huge spider inscribed in a shocking pink circle with cobwebs that radiated throughout the rest of the jersey. The first jersey was more normal, with the spider symbol of the franchise applied over the classic red and white vertical stripes pattern of Atletico. On both, of course, the logo of the upcoming movie. 

But that wasn't the only oddity that Atletico Madrid's uniforms bent to that season. The operation for Spider Man 2 remained the most invasive, but for the entire period in which Columbia Pictures remained sponsor of the Madrid team, they used the players on the field as 11 billboards on which to change every Sunday the film to be advertised. So on the red and white jerseys the logos of xXx2, Hitch, S.W.A.T., Peter Pan, Hellboy, Resident Evil and many others followed one another, creating an effect that today we would define as dystopian between the Hollywood titles and the 2000s faces of the Madrid players, all gels and circles. Needless to say, these jerseys immediately became a cult object among collectors due to their rarity and even today, although unobtainable, they remain among the strangest ever made by a soccer team. 

They belong to an almost forgotten era, suspended between the vintage patina of the '90s and today's clean design, when bad taste was a source of pride. An aesthetic that is slowly coming back into vogue almost twenty years later thanks to fashion collections inspired by Y2K and trends on TikTok, and that had in Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst its Peter Parker and Mary Jane. Now that in their place we have Tom Holland and Zendaya invited everywhere from the Ballon d'Or ceremony to the Parc des Princes, let's not forget who before MCU, Metaverse and Mbappé captured a soccer jersey with his web.