Everyone has a view on who will win the World Cup, but Herbert Hainer's is unusually trenchant: it will not be Nike.

"They announced at the 1998 World Cup that by 2002 they would be the world leader in football," said the Adidas chief executive. "They weren't.

"In 2002, they said they would be in 2006. They weren't. They're not the market leader in 2010 and they won't be in 2014."

Adidas expects the World Cup to help to deliver upwards of à1.5-billion of football-related sales this year, be it replica shirts, balls or other kit. A good World Cup will provide a springboard out of recession.

Perhaps as important, if less quantifiable, is the glory. How many times will the famous three-stripe Adidas logo be seen on winning teams? Here Adidas has a head start. It is the kit sponsor of 12 sides, including Spain, France and Argentina, double its representation at the 2006 World Cup. Nike has nine, or 10 including the England team, which is kitted out by Umbro, a manufacturer bought by Nike three years ago.

Hainer attributes the 26% rise in football sales in the first quarter to Chelsea's English Premier League and FA Cup wins and league victories for Germany's Bayern Munich and France's Marseille (all with Adidas). His relief at Chelsea's success is obvious, four barren years after signing up the club (Manchester United and Arsenal are with Nike).

Adidas also has the benefit of being the champ, not the challenger, in this fight, something it can trace back to the 1970 World Cup and Pele and Brazil.

Hence, perhaps, Nike's elaborate, three-minute multimillion-pound World Cup advert featuring Wayne Rooney beating Roger Federer at table tennis and Ronaldo nutmegging Homer Simpson. To overturn the status quo, you need to take the job seriously.

Adidas's marketing has a different emphasis - according to Paul Seline, the man in charge of its preparations for the tournament - one of "diversity in unity", a play on the motto of the South African coat of arms, Unity in Diversity, with Zinedine Zidane leading a quest to find archetypes who together form a perfect team (all contracted to Adidas, naturally). The subtext is clear: leave celebration of the individual to Nike.

The same thing can be found at Adidas's headquarters, half an hour from Nuremberg. Everybody here is young, athletic-looking and wears sports gear. Even the chief executive. In the words of one worker: "If you see someone wearing a tie you know they're an analyst. Or a journalist from England."

The HQ campus facilities include a football and athletics stadium, a beach volleyball court, tennis courts, a basketball court and a five-a-side football pitch. Mexico's footballers were in residence last week, preparing for South Africa.

"It's good to look out and see the young people running around," said Hainer. "But the majority of people here have a passion for sport. If you like sport then you like competition. This competitiveness means they work harder."

Nike is the opposing team, the other side of a two-horse race. "If you look to the number three, they have à2.4-billion in revenue. We have nearly à11-billion."

Number three is Puma, based half a mile away and founded by the brother of Adi Dassler (the Adi and Das of the company's name) after a bitter dispute.

An embittered Rudolf Dassler set up on the opposite side of the river from Adi. When Hainer started at Adidas in 1987, the feud still loomed large.

"There was big rivalry. Staff didn't talk to each other. It was forbidden to use the name Puma in Adidas and the other way around. The whole town was split - there were Puma pubs and Adidas pubs. Over the last 15 years the relationship has normalised."

The two sides formally buried the hatchet last year with a symbolic football match.

Under Hainer, Adidas's revenue has nearly doubled. He inherited the company from Robert Louis-Dreyfus, who had saved it from the brink of bankruptcy. His first step was symbolic: he banned complementary biscuits.

"I was called the cookie-cutter. When I took over as deputy CEO in 2000, I ran the show. In the '90s we had a very good run. Then we went to the stock market [in 1995] and in the [late '90s] started declining."

He stripped out layers of management and changed the internal organisation, based not around categories (footwear and apparel) or brands but market segments: technical and performance gear (anything from football boots to running vests); fashion and lifestyle goods under the Adidas Originals banner; and sportswear.

The $3.8-billion acquisition of Reebok in 2006 was a game-changing moment. An accelerating Reebok, focusing on the fitness market, opened a new front with Nike in the US. - © The Times, London