Hello, Hi Visionaries!

Adidas' Backyard Legends campaign has brought back that 90s football nostalgia and for good reason. Timothée Chalamet as cultural bridge. Messi, Bellingham, Lamine Yamal, Trinity Rodman, Beckham, Zidane, Del Piero and Bad Bunny as the cast. The premise: backyard football, free play, and the idea that legends are made anywhere. It is cinema, nostalgia and product in one package and it works.

Here is the uncomfortable truth for Nike: Adidas learned this from them.

Twenty years ago, Nike had already cracked this formula.

My Personal Favourite The Secret Tournament (2002) was more than an advert. It was a football competition that you wanted to recreate in the streets: 24 elite players, eight teams, three-a-side, first goal wins, Eric Cantona as host and referee. Staged inside a cage on a cargo ship. It was simultaneously a World Cup campaign, a short film, a gaming concept and a street football movement. Here, Nike sold more than boots, for me it felt like they created a world just for ballers.

Joga Bonito (2006) went further. Cantona became the philosopher. Ronaldinho, Henry, Cristiano Ronaldo, Rooney, Zlatan and Thierry Henry became characters inside a football universe where flair, expression and joy mattered more than in game management. The tagline translated as "play beautifully". The campaign became a cultural reference point for an entire generation of football fans. Again, Nike didn’t need to say "buy these mercurial vapours or Tiempos" They created something that made people want to belong to it.

Lets direct about what has happened here. Nike's recent results tell a clear story: revenue pressure, weakened brand momentum, channel distribution problems, and a growing disconnect from sport-first storytelling. It’s more than a marketing problem. It’s a brand that has let its assets fall by the wayside because it hasn’t put in place proper governance.

Nike holds some of the most emotionally valuable sports IP ever created, and that IP has been sitting largely dormant. In commercial governance terms, this is the equivalent of a business owning a prime asset and leaving it off the balance sheet. The question boards and senior leadership should be asking is not "how do we sell more boots?" It is: what is the current monetisable value of Joga Bonito as existing IP and who is accountable for activating it?

That is a question for a board room, not a creative department. And right now, it does not appear to be getting asked.

If I was working at Nike this is what I’d be doing

I think the case for a sequel universe is straightforward once you map the structural conditions. Three things are true simultaneously:

First, the fans who grew up with Joga Bonito are now adults with disposable income, children and deep nostalgia for that era of football culture. Second, the current generation of young fans has inherited no unifying football mythology from Nike. They have players, drops and social content, but no story. Third, the content ecosystem has shifted completely since 2006. Joga Bonito today would live as a multi-platform series.

The creative side of things writes itself. The original legends, Henry, Ronaldinho, Cristiano, Rooney, Zlatan are now coaches, pundits, entrepreneurs and cultural figures. They are no longer in their prime, but the touch never really leaves. You build an episodes around that storyline: the skill remains; the legs do not. Cantona returns, older and more mythic, with a line something like: "Beautiful football was never ours. We were only borrowing it."

Then the new generation enters. Olise. Mbappé. Vini Jr. The women's game as a lead carrier of the new Joga code, not an afterthought. The legends pass the ball on.

Not a boot launch. Not a nostalgia campaign. A succession story.

The content:

Each episode feeds into YouTube films, TikTok skill challenges, creator remixes, street football events, limited edition boot drops, academy activations and gaming integrations. The IP earns across every channel.

Dormant IP is a governance issue, not just a creative one. If your organisation owns high-value heritage assets and cannot articulate their current strategic use, that belongs on a board agenda.

Nostalgia without succession is wasted IP. The most powerful brand revivals connect legacy to the future, not the past. Adidas' Backyard Legends works because it bridges generations. Nike still has the opportunity that can work for the same reason.

World Cup cycles are governance events as much as commercial ones. The 2026 World Cup is a structured deadline. Brands and rights-holders with unactivated IP have a finite window. Commercial governance means acting before the market does it for you.

The right question is rarely "how do we sell more product?" The better question and the one boards should insist on is: what world do we want people to want to live inside?

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not financial or business advice in any capacity. The information shared is our thoughts & opinions and does not represent the opinions of any other person, business, entity, or sponsor. The contents of this newsletter also should not be used in any public or private domain without the authors express permission.