Adidas has assembled its team for the FIFA Club World Cup, and global superstars Lionel Messi and Patrick Mahomes are making an immediate impact off the bench.

In the 45-second spot, shared exclusively with ADWEEK, the camera zooms in on a small training gym and past Antonela Roccuzzo helping Brittany Mahomes through a workout with a kettlebell (“Almost done!”) before settling in on Patrick Mahomes keeping a steady pace on a treadmill.

Looking over his left shoulder to a figure off camera, he slowly increases the treadmill’s speed before reaching over and boosting that of his neighbor—whose soccer jersey is only reflected in his treadmill’s control panel.

The camera moves past Mahomes to reveal his perplexed neighbor, Messi, just before he returns the favor and increases the difficulty of Mahomes’ run. The two spend the waning seconds messing with each other’s settings, with Mahomes shouting words of encouragement, before the camera lowers to their matching Adizero EVO SL training shoes, with text noting that “We all need someone to make us believe.”

“In sports, as in anything that you are passionate about, the work never stops,” said Mahomes. “But nobody succeeds alone. You need people who believe in you and who challenge you to be better.”

The ad was made with help from creative partners Mark Fitzloff and Rob Palmer at Opinionated, and director Ryan Booth from production company division7.

It’s a continuation of the “You Got This” theme Adidas has been using to encourage athletes since February 2024, but it’s particularly prescient during a “summer of soccer” that includes the FIFA Club World Cup, the Concacaf Gold Cup national championships, a Premier League tour of the U.S., and the restart of the Major League Soccer (MLS) season—all before the North American 2026 FIFA World Cup.

With Messi and Mahomes each linking U.S. fans to soccer through their ties to the game, Adidas has built them into a campaign that will still have legs when a summer of global fútbol fades into a fall of American football.

“Soccer is fast becoming one of the key American sports: You can feel the growth of it, you can see the interest in it—if you wake up on Saturday and Sunday mornings now, you see a lot of European soccer on TV that wasn’t there before,” said Chris Murphy, Adidas North America’s svp of brand marketing.

“If you look at the ownership group of LAFC, look at some of the owners now in the new club in San Diego, obviously with Patrick’s ownership interest [in Sporting KC and the Kansas City Current], there are a lot of traditional sports stars and culture icons in this market being in America taking a much bigger role and connectivity and action when it comes to soccer.”

One big football family

With Messi’s Major League Soccer side Inter Miami opening its FIFA Club World Cup run against the Egyptian Premier League’s Al Ahly FC at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami on June 14, Adidas is throwing some support around an athlete it’s believed in since 2006—and locked into a lifetime deal in 2017.

With Mahomes, meanwhile, Adidas connects to a broader swath of U.S. sports fans in the tournament’s host country through an athlete it first signed in 2017—the year he was drafted by the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs. Since then, Mahomes and Adidas have expanded on their partnership to include Mahomes’ signature FLX training shoe and a partnership with his alma mater Texas Tech that just added six of the school’s athletes to Adidas’ Team Mahomes through a name, image, and likeness (NIL) deal, including softball pitcher NiJaree Canady, who powered the Red Raiders to their first Women’s College World Series final as Mahomes watched from a box seat. 

Adidas has been alongside Mahomes for his entire foray into soccer, first as a member of Sporting KC’s ownership group in 2021 and then joining Kansas City Current founder and co-owner Brittany Mahomes with an ownership stake in 2023. Not only can Mahomes serve as a bridge to international soccer for more casual U.S. fans, but he can also help the campaign extend from the summer of soccer through the start of the NFL season.

“Patrick has a unique connection to soccer, given his ownership within the space, and he could connect with Lionel as well, as they’ve met a few times and they have a good relationship,” Murphy said. “As OTAs [organized team activities] for football have started the news cycle for [NFL] football, the timing is quite good with MLS and the summer of soccer. So the football and football pairing worked really well.”

Selling it without telling it

Adidas has verticals dedicated to both Lionel Messi and Patrick Mahomes products, and there’s no shortage of it in the ad. Messi complements his Adizero EVO SLs with Adidas’ Messi-branded training jersey and training shorts. Mahomes, meanwhile, puts an Own The Run T-shirt over Designed for Training Shorts and Ultimate Hi Vis Leggings.

Antonela Roccuzzo and Brittany Mahomes, meanwhile, get matching Optime 3-Stripes leggings and Dropset 3 weight training shoes, as well as Mahomes’ Sportswear Sweatshirt and Roccuzzo’s TLRD Impact Training High Support Bra.

But the apparel was somewhat secondary when it came to assembling the ads.

“We continue to want to highlight this idea of ‘You Got This’… this belief in yourself that, through all the pressure and everything else that comes with sport, there’s this joy and optimism when it comes to all things sport,” Murphy said

The brief of pairing Messi and Mahomes for that message did come with some obstacles: “I can’t put Mahomes in soccer cleats and Messi in football cleats, so what do we do? Well, we are right now in the process of launching a very good running shoe that’s already won a few awards, so there’s an opportunity for us to make sure that we are thinking about product.”

But as Adidas has learned through generations of international advertising for major events, sometimes it’s best to sell both the message and product with as few words as possible. With some noteworthy exceptions, Adidas World Cup ads have often been lush in presentation but spare in language. 

With few words exchanged in this spot ahead of the FIFA Club World Cup, Adidas lets Messi and Mahomes’ actions do the talking and the selling.

“The whole campaign is built on an insight: If you’re thinking about kids or anyone who plays sport, there is someone in your network that is always pushing you to be better or to help you believe that you can do anything,” Murphy said. “The lack of language works really well for those two—Messi is relatively soft spoken, but has the grit you see on the field and is very good at lifting his teammates up, while Patrick’s a much more vocal leader.”