Languedoc Sun - ------ Barbara SMIT

------ Barbara SMIT

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Barbara Smit

Barbara_Smit Barbara Smit is a journalist and has reported on the affairs of big businesses for the Financial Times, International Herald Tribune and others. Over the past four years she has travelled all around Europe and the United States to investigate the true story of Adidas, interviewing those involved with the company, declassifying documents and unearthing exclusive stories. Pitch Invasion has been translated into three languages.

sneakers_wars Sneaker Wars:The Enemy Brothers Who Founded Adidas and Puma and the Family Feud That Forever Changed the Business of Sports.

Today, sport is big business, and Adidas and Puma are two of the biggest global brands, paying stars, clubs and competitions to wear their label, dominating everywhere from football pitches to magazine pages. This is the incredible story of how the rivalry between two brothers turned sport into an industry.

Pitch Invasion also tells the tales of some of the greatest sportsmen of all pitch_invasion time, revealing the Pele pact, Boris Becker’s unfortunate contribution to the demise of Puma, and just how Adidas helped Mohammed Ali win his biggest fight. Reaching right up to today’s world of multibillion-dollar corporations, looking at how the arrival of Nike affected the pitch and the significance of Adidas’s recent takeover of Reebok, this is an incredible sporting drama of competition, greed, bribery, passion and shoes.