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Adidas sells three million World Cup shirts

AFP/DPA/The Local
AFP/DPA/The Local - [email protected]
Adidas sells three million World Cup shirts
World Cup-winning manager Joachim Löw accepts the award at a gala in Baden Baden on Sunday Photo. DPA

Football fans have snapped up a total of more than three million replica kits of their world-cup winning heroes, Adidas announced, with much of that boost coming in the run-up to Christmas. The team were also honoured as Germany's "Sportsmen of the Year" on Sunday.

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That total is double the comparable figure sold when Germany actually hosted the World Cup back in 2006.

The new version of the top comes with a fourth star added, to symbolize the team's victory in Rio de Janeiro this summer - the fourth time Die Mannschaft (national squad) has held aloft the Jules Rimet trophy.

"In total, we have sold more than three million shirts (since it was presented in November 2013)," Adidas chief executive officer Herbert Hainer told Focus magazine. The latest edition of the jersey, with the fourth star above the German Football Association (DFB) logo, has been a 'big seller' before Christmas, added Hainer.

Meanwhile, the world-cup winning manager Joachim Löw won the coveted "Sportsmen of the Year" competition on Sunday.

At a star-studded gala in Baden-Baden, Löw accepted the award on behalf of his team - currently enjoying the winter break from the Bundesliga.

Although winning the award was virtually a foregone conclusion in the wake of the euphoria surrounding the win in Brazil, it was still a vote of confidence in the German team, who have not replicated their domineering form in recent post-Cup internationals.

"It was the togetherness in the team," German Football Association (DFB) president Wolfgang Niersbach said.

"In those six weeks in Brazil, we did not have any internal tensions."

That comment inadvertently echoes a compliment allegedly paid by England midfielder Stephen Gerrard to the German team, when he said: "Brazil has Neymar, Argentina has Messi, Portugal has Ronaldo. German has a team."

Embarrassingly, it turned out Gerrard never said it - but that didn't stop a German documentary film called "Die Mannschaft" using it as an epigraph when it hit cinemas in the run-up to Christmas.

The other winners in the "Sportsman of the Year" competition were champion skier Maria Höfl-Riesch, who announced her retirement after successfully defending her title at this year's WInter Olympics in Sochi, and discus legend Robert Harting, who is current Olympic, World and European champion.

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