We've been embedded with the national football team all this week in Portland Oregon. It was smooth sailing until last night's tough loss to the USA. One of the highlites for the team members was a trip to the Nike Campus. Nike, the sports apparel company is based on Portland Oregon and the team is sponsored by Nike as well. So they got a special hook-up to go to a very special store, the only one of its kinds in the USA probably, the Nike employees Store. Jules Vasquez tagged along - and here's how it went.
Jules Vasquez reporting from Portland
A trip to the Nike store meant a walk from the team's downtown hotel to the MAX Rail train stop - which is just two blocks away. The team took over the sidewalk and seemed to enjoy the group outing.
And when they had to wait a few minutes for the train, they used the opportunity at the picturesque Pioneer Square South for some photo taking, profiling, and interviews with foreign media.
All this commotion drew hardly any attention in downtown Portland - where the city's informal slogan is "Keep Portland Weird."
So, in the train they fit right in and looked the part of international athletes on their way to a corporate engagement.
Dalton Eiley - Captain, Belize Team
"Nike is our main sponsor and just to go there and see what Nike is all about and for them to show us the love and we show them the love back."
Now, the Nike employee store is the ultimate perk worth a phot op even for seasoned professionals. Everything in the store is the latest Nike has on the market, but everything is half off.
We were barred by store management from taping inside this little known spot – but suffice to say these athletes were overjoyed with what they found.
Marlon Kuylen, FFB Executive Member
"They were happy and buying stuff like crazy."
Dalton Eiley - Team Captain
"The importance of that trip is to get the players to feel what it's like over here, how easy it is to get gears. They gave us half price off and that's good for the players. That's something we've never had in the past and now we had that experience. We'd like to say a big thank you to Nike and they've given us a lot of equipment and without their help we wouldn't be here today."
The players left with bags full of tennis shoes everyone we saw checking out spent well over a hundred us dollars, but for that they got twice the amount of the latest Nike merchandise. The team captain says it was a morale booster.
Dalton Eiley - Team Captain
"Actually we wanted to go from we heard about it in Belize. It boosted their morale and they got the exact things they wanted, some of us didn't have the proper boots for the pitch but we got it when we went to the Nike store."
We stress that this story was filmed on Monday, before the loss to the USA - which explains the high spirits. The mood of the team was much more muted as they transitioned to Utah. We remain embedded with them and will have our first report form Utah tomorrow.
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