On pre-sale (one week period), Flamengo already sold 204.840 shirts. Incredible, considering that Nike used to sell around 120.000 jerseys a year.

Here is a image comparing the old shirt and the new one. Besides that, you can also compare fat and slim Adriano.

Now, our contract with Nike has finished after a complicated year on which we fought against them, tried to break the contract, suffer some restriction from the sponsor that wouldn’t send us material to practice and to the Olympic sports such as basketball. It was a difficult year, but now, we’ve legally signed a R$ 175 million (about US$ 87,5 million) for 5 years with Olympikus that counts with the construction of 10 stores through the country and one museum at Gávea. Besides that, Olympikus will be the main sponsor for the next 3 months, putting the “Olympikus Tube” name on our shirt.

Gotta say, a spectacular contract! And after watching the event that showed us the new kits, I also watched some Olympikus’ directors being interviewed and they showed, at least on their first talking, respect and the willing to develop their name using Flamengo as part of it.

Olympikus is the biggest brazilian sports material company, but Flamengo is their first contact with football and they are thinking that nothing is better to enter this market than the world’s most popular team. I agree, since they try to help Flamengo. As Jerry Maguire used to say “help me help you”. And as they’ve already shown, they are helping us help them. A parcel of Adriano’s wages will be payed by a percentage of products sales revenues.

A new era? Certainly. A great new era? Only time can say.

Here are the jerseys. Football and basketball kits.

The home kit, at first, made me nauseous, but then I got used to it (actually, really fast) and now I’m thinking the jersey is great. But the away kit is looking amazing.

And you guys, what do you think about it?