Celebrating Nikes “The Mission” 25th Birthday

Twenty-five years ago to the day Nike released one of the most iconic football adverts ever created “ The Mission” 

The advert featured a hit squad of football superstars from the early 2000s led by Louis Van Gaal with the clear mission of rescuing the Nike Geo Merlin football from the grasp of an army of robot samurais. 

Armed with Nike Air Zoom Total 90s and using their super skills, the crack team had to go full Mission Impossible to break into the max security, Berlin-esque building to recover the roundest ball on the planet. 

Edgar Davids, Hidetoshi Nakata, Lilian Thuram, Pep Guardiola, Luis Figo Francesco Totti, Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole and Oliver Bierhoff have a minute and a half to scale the walls and avoid the lasers before the alarm is tripped and the famous nine must get the ball out of the building whilst being hunted down by the soccer samurai henchman.

As most of you know, the advert ends with Davids and Oliver Bierhoff finishing off the end of level boss with a mega shot from the Geo ball before the ballers escape by helicopter and the building goes up in flames. 

Twenty-five years on the advert is still top of the pile and has possibly only been bested by the illustrious Scorpian Secret Tournament that was the follow up to this masterpiece and let's face it built on the success of this wild football Hollywood ride. 

For the first instalment of my new series, “Forgotten Football Adverts”, I asked a couple of my favorite creatives, Dan Draws and Marco Caruso to help me reimagine some merch to celebrate the legendary advert in all its glory. 

(The Mission poster by @danxdraws)

Here's Dan Mission masterpiece dedicated to his favourite parts from the advert. His aim was to create something as supreme as the commercial itself and that would be worthy of any Hollywood blockbuster screening cinema foyer.

(1 of 1 hand made sculpture by @marco1caruso)

For Marco's installment he magicked up this quite incredible 13" inch-tall action figure of the end of level boss. Complete with fully moveable arms, detachable helmet and wooden stand. It really is something to behold, and I can guarantee if Nike had released these at the time they defiantly would of had a (Arnold Schwarzenegger) Turbo-Man situation on their hands. 

When we all came together and spoke about the football film, we were all in agreement that, for all the money spent on these famed football adverts, it's crazy that, apart from a slightly rushed PS1 game how little merchandise was available to the public. And what’s even more ridiculous is the lack of photos of some of the players during these shoots. I mean there must be a photographer somewhere out there who signed a non-disclosure with a memory card full of incredible photos of Edgar Davids doing keep-ups with a ninja and Van Gal dropping some straight-face jokes to the van full of footballers. 

We can only dream that some of these surface by the time the next twenty-fifth anniversary comes around. 

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy our homage to the round ball heist. There is still three or four prints and T-shirts in a variety of sizes on the web-store.

Once they’re gone, they’re gone.

*Click on the images to be taken to the right page to pick one up*