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ENGL 425, Editing & Publishing
Dr Kathleen Guillaume
English & Translation Dept
Spring 2024
The Stratospheric Rise of Lionel
Messi’s Pink Jerseyi
Task #1, Text
In the span of three months, the soccer superstar has made Inter Miami’s eye-catching jersey the
hottest piece of sports merchandise on the planet.
Within days of Lionel Messi’s announcement that he would join Inter Miami, stores and suppliers had asked
Adidas for nearly half a million jerseys. Credit: Eric Hartline/USA Today Sports, via Reuters
§1 All of a sudden, after a single summer, the pink jersey is everywhere. It has become almost
impossible to acquire, yet there it is, paradoxically, on the backs of thousands of fans thronging
American stadiums, hanging from market stalls in Buenos Aires and Bangkok, a vivid flash on
almost every field where children gather to play soccer in England.
§2 That the jersey has become, apparently overnight, the hottest piece of sports merchandise on
the planet is a simple, capitalist equation: the result of an irresistible combination of one of the
most recognizable and beloved athletes of his generation; a distinctive, exotic color; and the
ruthless efficiency of textile factories in Southeast Asia.
§3 Somehow, though, few people saw it coming. Tor Southard was better placed than most, but
even he was caught unaware. As Adidas’s senior director for soccer in§1 North America, he had
been receiving emails from colleagues for nearly a year asking if the company’s biggest star, Lionel
Messi, would be joining Inter Miami, also a client of Adidas.
ENGL 425, Editing & Publishing
Dr Kathleen Guillaume
English & Translation Dept
Spring 2024
§4 As far as he knew, it was just a rumor. Like the rest of the planet, Southard learned it was true
only on June 7, the day Messi announced his intentions in a rare interview with two Spanish news
outlets.
§5 For many, the immediate question was the soccer one. Six months after winning the World Cup
with Argentina, why was Messi, the finest player of his generation and arguably the best of all time,
leaving the elite clubs and competitions of Europe to join a team that ranked among the worst in
the comparative backwater of America’s top league, Major League Soccer?
§6 For Southard, and for Adidas, there was a rather more pressing matter. Within a couple of days
of Messi’s announcement, the company had received almost 500,000 requests from stores and
suppliers for jerseys in Miami’s soft, electric pink. It is a specific fabric and a specific shade:
Pantone 1895C. “It’s not like it was white, and we had inventory we could repurpose,” Southard
said.
§7 Even if they could not foresee quite what a phenomenon the jersey would become, and quite
how many people would clamor to get their hands on one, Southard and his colleagues had some
sense of what was about to happen.
§8 Adidas was going to need more of that fabric. A lot more.
‘No. 1 priority’
The Adidas flagship store in Manhattan. Credit: John Taggart for The New York Times
§9 On the day Messi announced he would sign for Inter Miami, Adidas had a stock of Inter Miami
jerseys in stores and storage facilities around the United States. It did not last. The shirts sold out
so quickly that Southard said it seemed the inventory simply “evaporated.”
ENGL 425, Editing & Publishing
Dr Kathleen Guillaume
English & Translation Dept
Spring 2024
§10 Getting the fabric to make more — and fast — was just the first step. Although Adidas would
not start selling official Messi jerseys until his contract was formally signed on July 15, it placed
orders for vast rolls of the pink fabric needed to make them within 24 hours of his interview on
Spanish television in the first week of June.
§11 The risk, of course, was that the deal could still collapse. “It’s a trade-off you make for speed,”
Southard said.
§12 In ordinary circumstances, retailers order jerseys as many as nine months in advance. Major
sportswear brands, like Adidas and Nike, generally prefer to produce large batches of team gear,
rather than manufacturing to meet demand, as fast fashion chains tend to do.
§13 Given the number of what the industry terms “chase buys” — a sudden influx of orders in
unanticipated volumes — for Messi’s Inter Miami jersey, Adidas knew its usual playbook would not
work.
A lone Messi shirt left in a soccer shop outside Tokyo. Credit: Kosuke Okahara for The New York Times
§14 It had learned that from experience. In 2021, when Cristiano Ronaldo returned to Manchester
United, one of the handful of retailers Adidas works with, Fanatics, asked for a million more
jerseys. A year later, after Messi helped Argentina win the World Cup, Adidas had to produce and
ship an extra 400,000 Argentine national team shirts in the span of three months.
§15 Getting pink jerseys bearing Messi’s name and No. 10 into the market, Southard said,
immediately became Adidas’s “No. 1 priority, globally.”
ENGL 425, Editing & Publishing
Dr Kathleen Guillaume
English & Translation Dept
Spring 2024
Frisco, Texas. Credit: Logan Riely/Getty Images
§16 To streamline the process, the company sourced the pink, recycled polyester fabric for the
jerseys as close as possible to the factories in Southeast Asia that would make them. Orders for
other details like logos and crests were expedited at other facilities, sometimes leapfrogging the
production of apparel for other Adidas teams. To cut down on shipping times, the first batches of
the Messi jerseys were sent out in small shipments, almost as soon as they came off the production
line.
§17 The frantic production effort worked. Initially, Adidas had told its retailers to begin selling
jerseys with a promise of delivery by Oct. 15. But the first editions arrived in the United States by
July 18. They were sent straight to Miami, where demand was highest.
§18 They sold out almost instantly.
‘Everyone has a hookup’
ENGL 425, Editing & Publishing
Dr Kathleen Guillaume
La Paz, Bolivia. Credit: Leonardo Fernandez/Getty Images
English & Translation Dept
Spring 2024
ENGL 425, Editing & Publishing
Dr Kathleen Guillaume
English & Translation Dept
Spring 2024
§19 On a street corner in Miami’s wealthy Brickell neighborhood one evening last month, two
young men had set up a pop-up Messi store, their racks groaning with Inter Miami jerseys in pink
and an alternate version — black with pink trim — that the team wears on the road. This was the
work of the imaginatively titled Messi Miami Shop.
§20 The name sounds official. The online store looks it, too. It sells two versions of the Messi
jersey, as most sportswear manufacturers now do: a “player version” made with high-quality
material and an athletic cut, and a “replica” designed for fans whose bodies might not have the
precise dimensions of an elite athlete.
§21 The Messi Miami Shop is not, though, affiliated in any way with Messi, Inter Miami or Adidas.
(It is, though, a shop.) Its jerseys had come, instead, from a contact in Thailand, purchased for $10
apiece. “This is Miami,” one of the sellers said. “Everyone has a hookup.” And a markup: The stall
was selling the jerseys at $25 for a children’s edition and as much as $65 for an “authentic”
inauthentic adult version of the team’s black jersey.
§22 The sellers, who declined to give their names for reasons that should be obvious, had sold
around 30 in a couple of hours, they said. But they are not the only ones hustling.
§23 A few nights earlier, outside Exploria Stadium in Orlando, Fla., a different group of hawkers
were doing their own brisk business in Messi jerseys. Messi was not playing that night — he missed
several weeks of the season because of an injury — but Inter Miami was in town, and plenty of fans
were prepared to pay $40 for a pink jersey bearing his name, even if it had shoddy stitching and
was plucked from a backpack.
§24 Despite all of Adidas’s attempts to get its official Messi jerseys into stores as quickly as
possible, the clamor for them — any version of them — has proved so great that counterfeits have
flooded the global market to meet the shortfall.
§25 Though the company says it has now largely caught up with the backlog of orders, it has found
that it is still selling jerseys far faster than it can produce them, and not just in the United States.
ENGL 425, Editing & Publishing
Dr Kathleen Guillaume
English & Translation Dept
Spring 2024
Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Dado Galdieri for The New York Times
§26 In Buenos Aires, where Messi’s status as a national treasure was sealed by victory in the World
Cup, there are pink jerseys for sale in store after store and kiosk after kiosk along Calle Florida, one
of the Argentine capital’s teeming shopping streets, and in the stalls of the bustling San Telmo
Market. At some vendors, the fakes go for about $50.
§27 In Europe, where tribal affiliations to local clubs run deep, Miami jerseys are suddenly
commonplace. At a training session for elementary school children last month in Manchester,
England, the usual concentration of Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool gear was
flecked with a half dozen pink Inter Miami jerseys, each bearing Messi’s name.
§28 It is difficult to overstate the scale of demand. Official sales have surpassed every benchmark
Adidas could have imagined, Southard said: more than the frenzy that accompanied David
Beckham’s move to the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2007; beyond the rush prompted by Ronaldo’s
return to Manchester United in 2021; beyond the clamor for Messi’s Argentina shirt in the
aftermath of Qatar 2022.
§29 Inter Miami is now the best-selling Adidas soccer jersey in North America, ahead of all five of
the storied European clubs that the brand traditionally regards as the crown jewels of its portfolio:
Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus, Bayern Munich and Arsenal.
§30 Since July, Fanatics, which dominates sports apparel in the United States, has sold more Messi
jerseys than for any other soccer player, and any athlete at all except the Philadelphia Eagles
quarterback Jalen Hurts. No player, in any sport, has ever sold more jerseys on the site in the first
24 hours after switching teams than Messi did in July.
ENGL 425, Editing & Publishing
Dr Kathleen Guillaume
English & Translation Dept
Spring 2024
The Adidas store in Manhattan. Credit: John Taggart for The New York Times
§31 His cinematic arrival in M.L.S. — with a late game-winning goal in his debut on July 22 —
came too late to salvage Inter Miami’s season. The club will miss the playoffs, which start on
Wednesday. Messi will not play in pink again until next year.
§32 But that has done little to quell his impact. Inter Miami’s games drew record crowds from the
moment he arrived. The team’s ticket prices for next season have soared. Adidas is confident that it
has enough of the next edition of Messi’s jersey — due out in February — in production to meet
demand.
§33 For many fans and retailers, it cannot come a moment too soon. The jersey has become so
coveted, so scarce, that even Beckham himself — one of the most famous soccer players of his
generation, a worldwide celebrity and, as part-owner of Inter Miami, Messi’s boss — has found it
hard to get hold of one.
§34 More than once, he has wanted to send a pink Messi jersey to a friend or an associate as a gift,
only to be told that he will have to wait, just like everyone else.
Alan Blinder and Patricia Mazzei contributed reporting from Buenos Aires.
Kevin Draper is an investigative reporter on the Sports desk, where he has written about workplace
harassment and discrimination, sexual misconduct, doping, league investigations and high-profile
court cases. More about Kevin Draper
Rory Smith is The Times’s chief soccer correspondent, based in Britain. He covers all aspects of
European soccer and has reported from three World Cups, the Olympics, and numerous European
tournaments. More about Rory Smith
ENGL 425, Editing & Publishing
Dr Kathleen Guillaume
i
English & Translation Dept
Spring 2024
Source: New York Times, by Kevin Draper & Rory Smith [23Oct23]
Kevin Draper reported from Miami and Orlando, Fla. Rory Smith spotted pink jerseys of varying authenticity
in London, Manchester and West Yorkshire, England
ENGL 425, Editing & Publishing
Dr Kathleen Guillaume
Tasks during Ramadan
English & Translation Dept
Spring 2024
Task #1 Questions on The Stratospheric Rise of Lionel Messi’s Pink Jersey [NYT, 23Oct23]
Answer the questions below (§ = paragraph), pushing down the questions as you write in your answers
underneath them. Use a different coloured font from black – do not use red. Do not write “I don’t know” –
find out. Don’t say “this is my best guess” – find out for sure. Remember that this isn’t just about
comprehension, it’s also about finding the facts fast. Email me your answers (under Word) by next Monday
25th March.
Q.1 Subheading: Give two further examples – of your own – of “sports merchandise” to show you understand the
term.
Q.2 §1 Why mention Buenos Aires and Bangkok: what do their names have in common?
Q.3 §1: In England, they call football “soccer” but not in Scotland or Ireland. Why would the Americans also call it
“soccer”, do you think?
Q.4 §2: In the “capitalist equation”, how many elements are there: two or three?
Q.5 §3 line1: What does “it” refer to?
Q.6 §3 line2: What’s the value of the apostrophe-s after Adidas (Adidas’s)? Is it the same as “Kathleen’s car”?
Q.7 §4: What do we understand by “rare”? Find out who these “two Spanish outlets” are.
Q.8 §6: “[T]here was a rather more pressing matter” – “more pressing” than what?
Q.9 §6: Explain the words “inventory” and “repurpose”.
Q.10 §7: The verb “would become” talks about the ‘future in the past’. Find another example in this paragraph. How
come it’s the ‘future in the past’ for us as readers, now?
Q.11 §8: Why did the journalists write “that fabric”?
Q.12 §11: Explain Southard’s comment: “It’s a trade-off you make for speed”.
Q.13 §12: What do fast fashion chains tend to do?
Q.14 §13: What is Adidas’s “usual playbook”? And how is the term especially appropriate in the context?
Q.15 Photo caption “A lone Messi shirt…”: Who exactly do you think Kosuke Okahara is?
Q.16 Photo caption: “Frisco, Texas…” What does “Logan Riely/Getty Images” signify?
Q.17 §16: What does “leapfrogging” mean in this sentence?
Q.18 §16: What do we assume about the details of “sent out in small shipments”, given how this sentence began?
Q.19 §19: Explain “that the team wears on the road”.
Q.20 §20: Find a euphemism in this paragraph.
Q.21 §21: Explain “hookup” and “markup”. Are these Verbs or Nouns?
Q.22 §20: Explain “reasons that should be obvious”.
Q.23 §23: Why did they choose the word “plucked”? What would have been an ordinary word?
Q.24 §24: What does “shortfall” mean and what Verb does it come from?
Q.25 §28: What were the benchmarks, which Adidas had in mind, that were surpassed?
ENGL 425, Editing & Publishing
Dr Kathleen Guillaume
Tasks during Ramadan
English & Translation Dept
Spring 2024
Q.26 §30: “Fanatics” was mentioned earlier: where? And who are they?
Q.27 §31: What do the journalists mean by “cinematic arrival”? And what does M.L.S. stand for?
Q.28 §31: Explain “came too late to salvage Inter Miami’s season”.
Q.29 §33: What’s surprising about “even Beckham himself”?
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