The margin between victory and defeat on the sports field is often narrow. For German sportswear group Adidas, narrow margins are a problem off the field, too. Back in 2010, its business plan called for operating margins of 11 per cent by 2015. Full-year published on Thursday showed them at 6.5 per cent. Kasper Rorsted, who takes over as chief executive later this year, has plenty to do.

An obvious first move would be to sell the golf division, TaylorMade adidas-Golf, whose sales fell 13 per cent (at unchanged exchanges rates) during 2015. Its future is already under review; based on the valuation of US-listed Callaway, TaylorMade could fetch perhaps €800m. However, while there are plenty of valid reasons to sell TaylorMade, it is only 5 per cent of sales so the effect of a disposal on margins would be limited. Selling Reebok, another underperformer, would have more impact, but Reebok’s sales and profits are at least growing and it is more integral to the group.

More durable results would come from cutting running costs. Gross margins at Adidas are similar to US rivals but at the operating level margins are lower. Assuming that its higher marketing spend (14 per cent of sales) is sacrosanct, that leaves about €4.9bn of other costs. Adidas says they will fall this year. They need to: they were 29 per cent of sales in 2015, compared with 22 per cent at Nike.