Every Messi jersey sold around the world carries a design with roots in Argentina's Jewish community, a story that has resurfaced as the team makes its way through this year's World Cup.
The crest worn by Argentina's national team, a vertical shield with laurel branches symbolizing victory and, since 2022, three stars representing the country's World Cup titles, was designed in 1976 by Norberto "Toto" Rud, then in his late twenties and a member of Club Náutico Hacoaj, a Jewish sports and cultural club in Buenos Aires. Rud, who worked as a businessman and had a lifelong passion for graphic design, noticed that while many European national teams wore distinctive emblems recognizable even on black and white television, Argentina's sky blue and white jerseys had no equivalent visual identity, easily confused with club teams wearing similar stripes.
He prepared roughly twenty design proposals and submitted them to the Argentine Football Association, whose president and executive committee ultimately selected his design. The crest debuted on November 28, 1976, in a scoreless friendly against the Soviet Union in Buenos Aires, and has remained essentially unchanged since, aside from the addition of the three stars marking Argentina's 1978, 1986, and 2022 World Cup titles.
Rud developed his love of the sport at Hacoaj, which was founded in 1935 by Jewish immigrants to Buenos Aires and remains one of Latin America's most prominent Jewish sporting institutions, with roughly 10,000 members across five facilities. The club, whose name means strength in Hebrew, has produced other notable Jewish athletes, including former world number eight tennis player Diego Schwartzman. Rud died in 2010 at age 61 and is buried in Buenos Aires' La Tablada, Latin America's largest Jewish cemetery, having lived to see Argentina wear his crest to two World Cup titles but not the third.
