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Nike and soccer: a match made in the 1970s, Timbers veteran says [The Oregonian, Portland, Ore. :: ]
[April 16, 2014]

Nike and soccer: a match made in the 1970s, Timbers veteran says [The Oregonian, Portland, Ore. :: ]


(Oregonian (Portland, OR) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) April 16--Nike rolled out a marketing campaign Monday calling attention to "20 years of brilliant football," a reference to the World Cup hosted in 1994 by the United States.

When the Oregon company sets the clock to measure its progress in the world of soccer, 1994 has been designated as the starting point.

Mick Hoban remembers it differently.

Hoban began working for Nike in 1978 after completing his professional soccer career with the Portland Timbers, then of the North American Soccer League. Nike assigned Hoban the job of building the company as a soccer brand in the United States and Europe.



"We were indeed in the soccer business," Hoban says, adding, "With limited success." The company's first-ever annual report, in 1981, features a full-page photo of a soccer player. Some at the company remember Steve Archibald of Scotland as the first player to score a World Cup goal wearing a Nike shoe. That was in 1982.

Hoban recalls he was Nike employee No. 120. He also recalls a bare-bones approach to product development, packaging, advertising and selling that bears no resemblance to the Nike Soccer marketing machine he sees today, in a company that has approximately 8,000 employees in Oregon and 48,000 worldwide.


It makes sense to Hoban that Nike has designated 1994 as the official reference point. That's the year stadiums were filled in the U.S. for the World Cup -- when company co-founder and chairman Phil Knight and other Nike executives recognized that soccer was a sport a global company could and should attack with all its resources.

At the end of its most recent fiscal year, Nike's revenue from soccer approached $2 billion, placing it a close second to Adidas, the German company that was the undisputed soccer leader in 1994. With Brazil hosting the World Cup this summer, Nike and Adidas are taking their competition to another level.

"I was the only employee initially with soccer," Hoban, 62, said on Monday. "I was working with production people, marketing people, events people." In addition to trying to convince professional players to wear Nike-brand soccer shoes, Hoban says he spent part of his time trying outfit professional teams in Nike-brand uniforms.

This was problematic because Nike did not technically have soccer apparel production at the time. Hoban says more than once he'd make a sale, then figure out where to source the shirts, shorts, socks, jackets, sweatpants, goalie gloves and other stuff to satisfy a contract.

"To a great extent we invested in the sports marketing before the product line," Hoban said, saying that in the 1970s and early 1980s the company was mostly a footwear company with apparel as an afterthought. Knight mentions launching an apparel line in the 1981 annual report.

Then and now, shoes were a player's choice. While Nike Soccer today is in a can-you-top-this race with Adidas to develop a shoe that is lighter, more comfortable and better performing, Hoban chuckles at Nike's earliest attempts at a soccer shoe.

"They were improving all the time," he said. "We had issues as you do every time you introduce a new line of footwear for any sport." Part of the challenge was that most of Nike's footwear development team, based then in Exeter, N.H., was populated by designers with backgrounds and an interest in creating running shoes and basketball shoes, not soccer shoes.

"I was jealous of the guys in track and field," Hoban said. "When their athletes would come through the headquarters and be given the (Nike running shoes) Cortez or the Tailwind, these athletes would be able to say, 'These are the best shoes in the world.' "With us, we had to convince people we had a product, we will work diligently to improve that product and we will support the hell out of you." Hoban later went to work for Adidas America. His son, Liam Hoban, today oversees Adidas's Major League Soccer business; his daughter, Sarah Hoban, works as a sports marketing inventory manager for Adidas America.

Yet he said of Nike, "it was a great company then, it's a great company today." Hoban smiles when he remembers a breakthrough Nike moment that occurred at a time when he was trying to convince top management of soccer's global importance.

Peter Withe of English Premier League club Aston Villa, wearing a Nike shoe, scored a goal in the 1982 European Cup Final against the German club Bayern Munich. The Aston Villa partisans went wild in Rotterdam, Netherlands, for what turned out to be the only goal.

After Withe's goal, two Nike executives seated in front of Hoban -- Nelson Farris and Rob Strasser -- turned and gave Hoban a thumb's up sign.

Strasser later gave Hoban a book with an inscription acknowledging his soccer contributions: "Mick, thanks for getting us started, Rob." ___ (c)2014 The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.) Visit The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.) at www.oregonian.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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