Because of the war.. Why did the Russian national team change its shirt?

Since the early 1990s, the Russian national football team used to wear sportswear from Western brands, before the Ukraine war changed this path.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian Football Federation signed a contract with the German company “Adidas” in 1992 to supply the team with clothing, and the cooperation continued for one year.

Between 1993 and 2008, two American companies took over the mission: “Reebok” between 1993 and 1996, then “Nike” between 1997 and 2008, before the Russian national team returned to “Adidas” with a long-term contract.

But with the outbreak of the Ukraine war in February 2022, Adidas terminated its contract with Russia, in light of the broad Western sanctions imposed on Moscow.

Since 2024, the players of the Russian national team, deprived of international and European participation due to the war, have been wearing shirts of the Russian “Yugl” brand, in the first reliance on local clothing.

“Yugl” was founded in Moscow in 2015 by Artur Movsesyan, a Russian businessman of Armenian origin. It supplies the Russian and Somali national teams with clothing, in addition to a limited number of Russian clubs, the Armenian Alashkert and Belarusian Dinamo Minsk clubs.

Adidas’s position was not limited to ending its partnership with the Russian national team, as it suspended its stores and e-commerce operations in the country in March 2022, before confirming in October of the same year that it was ending its business in the Russian market permanently.