Romario

Romario is the Spanish sportswear brand whose name fooled half the country, and it was never its fault. It was born in 1977 in Alicante, when a father and son, both named Roque Mario, opened a shop for personalised shirts and named it Deportes Mario. In 1983 the company officially changed its name to Romario, simply an acronym of the founders' surnames, with no connection whatsoever to the Brazilian footballer, who at the time had not even debuted as a professional at Vasco da Gama. Chance made the two names coincide, and while Romário the player became one of the greatest strikers in the world in the 1990s, Romario the brand rode the confusion to dress and sponsor football and futsal teams across Spain, from Orihuela CF to futsal clubs in the Canary Islands. Now headquartered in Redován, in the same province of Alicante, over four decades later it remains a family business, specialising in textile customisation for sports clubs, true to the same principle it was founded on: dressing local teams, despite never actually being a footballer's brand at all.