As part of our regular A Word From Our Sponsors feature, we’ve put together a collection of Adidas advertisements from the company’s earlier years as a big player in the replica football boot market. In this first of two posts we have reproduced a number of their ads from the 1960s, the decade they established their own UK distribution and marketing after having their products promoted previously by Umbro.

There’s a stark and functional simplicity to these Adidas print ads and their overall look and feel is only strengthened by their adherence to black and white copy, even at a time when rivals started gravitating towards using full colour print.

Just as Umbro adopted an aggressive approach to getting their logo on most of the decade’s major club and national team shirts, so Adidas followed a similar template to put their famous three stripes on the boots of many of these same teams. Both companies naturally made a great play via their marketing of these key associations with the great and the good of the world game.

Click any of the images to enlarge.