Darwin Nunez has been a really polarizing figure at Liverpool ever since making his move to the club from Benfica last summer. While he has popped up with some crucial goals, especially in the win over Newcastle United this season, the Uruguayan has also been frustrating by missing absolute sitters quite consistently.
Despite all that, Nunez remains a popular figure among the majority of the fanbase for his loveable personality and hilarious mannerisms. Even though he might not be fluent in English, the striker tries his best to have a funny personality to keep up the spirit levels in the Liverpool dressing room.
Nunez is also quite fashionable in trying out new looks and different hairstyles, including a ponytail earlier this season. The Liverpool no.9 also loves to wear fashionable boots during games and has already gotten a number of different ones customized for himself by Nike.
The Uruguayan has been associated with Nike for a few years and has been treated quite nicely with a number of unique designs being made for him. Nunez got a customized version of the Nike Air Zoom Mercurial Superfly made just for him before Liverpool’s home game against Everton at Anfield last season.
The slick shoe actually had the Uruguay flag designed into one side and Darwin’s name imprinted on another.
Nunez also wore a slick Nike Mercurial edition quite recently in Liverpool’s thrilling 2-1 win over Crystal Palace earlier on in December.
But it appears that Nunez might be sounding out all the options ahead of a potential change in his boot sponsorship deal in 2024.
That is because, over the last few weeks, Nunez has surprised some by actually wearing a variety of different brands’ shoes than just sticking to his sponsored Nike boots.
After the win over Palace, Nunez turned up to a Liverpool training session donning boots created by Puma – a rival brand of Nike’s!
Indeed, he was seen doing his drills alongside Cody Gakpo and the cameras were able to catch him wearing a yellow Puma Ultra Ultimate boots – even though he wore Nike socks underneath as well!
This got rumours swirling that Nunez might be thinking about moving on from Nike to Puma, which has been able to swoop in some prominent footballers like Neymar, Jack Grealish and Kai Havertz over the last year or so.
However, amid all the speculation, the Liverpool striker decided to subtly troll all the chatter by then wearing boots from another major brand in Liverpool’s 5-1 thrashing of West Ham United in the Carabao Cup quarter-finals.
Nunez wore a beautiful black and white Adidas Predator boots and this is not your regular Adidas boots either. In fact, it appears that Adidas gave the Uruguayan forward the opportunity to debut their unreleased Adidas 2024 Laceless Boots for the important cup game.
This means that a brand that he isn’t even tied to decided to give him the opportunity to show off these boots for the first time in a football match. That has now sparked speculation that Nunez might be in line to sign for Adidas and move from Nike in the near future.
The Liverpool forward has definitely succeeded in getting a lot of attention around his boot sponsorship by wearing the different brands’ shoes in the last few weeks. It might be a ‘come and get me’ message to all three brands, and at this point, it looks like Adidas might be winning this race.