Hoeness suggests Kimmich swap his Nike cleats for Adidas...

Well, wouldn’t you know? After Bayern Munich’s 5-1 away domination of Borussia Mönchengladbach, the club president found something to criticize his star right-back for after all: his cleats! According to Bild, the boss grabbed Joshua Kimmich just outside the locker room doors and gave him some friendly advice:

You have to put on Adidas shoes sometime! You won’t fall over so often.

Kimmich, of course, is an official Nike athlete. The Swish that rode Michael Jordan to footwear glory even featured Kimmich in a 2016 profile, where he talked about his development and training. So what’s Kimmich wearing this year? According to Nike, it’s the Nike Phantom VNM, which look spiffy enough:

Kimmich is far from the only Bayern player to wear Nike. In fact, Thiago Alcantara, Robert Lewandowski, and Corentin Tolisso wear the very same cleats.

The team is split fairly evenly by brand, in fact: 13 vs 12. For Nike:

Defense: Kimmich, Niklas Süle, Jerome Boateng, Rafinha
Midfield: Thiago, Kingsley Coman, Leon Goretzka, Corentin Tolisso, Woo-yeong Jeong
Forwards: Franck Ribery, Alphonso Davies, Serge Gnabry, Robert Lewandowski (and even Sandro Wagner wore Nike)

And Adidas:

Goal: Manuel Neuer, Sven Ulreich, Christian Früchtl
Defense: David Alaba, Mats Hummels, Javi Martinez, Ron-Thorben Hoffmann
Midfield: James Rodriguez, Renato Sanches, Meritan Shabani
Forwards: Arjen Robben, Thomas Müller

You can even look up such things yourself, because of course the Internet has a site dedicated to who wears what cleats.

Adidas, of course, may be one of Bayern Munich’s major shareholders to the tune of 8.33% — but Uli Hoeness has been wearing Adidas for a very, very long time.

Photo by Rust/ullstein bild via Getty Images