Football Palestine has learned that the PFA were offered an official Adidas Sponsorship but inexplicably turned it down.
Adidas’s official representatives in the Middle East made first contact with the PFA during the 2019 AFC Asian Cup. Several months later, enough people knew about the deal that a national team player told Football Palestine in August 2019 that “We are getting Adidas Jerseys, the Football Association even asked me to hop on the MiTeam platform and choose the colors and template. It’s going to look very nice.”
The next month, and for the rest of qualifying, Palestine played in one of their worst looking shirts. A plain red shirt sourced from Joma with numbering and a flag poorly affixed to the shirt.
Football Palestine has obtained documents fully outlining the details of the proposal, the images of which can be seen below. In essence, the deal given to the Palestinian Football Association was exactly like the one give to the Football Federation of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
It is hard to overstate how good of a deal this was for the PFA. It is not the usual sponsorship that you might hear of in the press associated with the likes of Real Madrid and Bayern Munich but it is a good deal. Palestine would have received $200,000 USD worth of free merchandise; there would have been an obligation to spend at least $360,000 USD on Adidas merchandise but with a 40% discount, the PFA could have sold shirts to the general public in order and have made a small profit.
In addition to this, Adidas would have paid out bonuses to the PFA in the event they qualified for major international tournaments and would have helped in organizing friendlies and training camps; something the organization has historically struggled with.
Football Palestine reached out to the Palestine Football Association for comment but at the time of publication have yet to receive a response.
Adidas Communication to the PFA
