For professional athletes, a championship trophy is the pinnacle of achievement. In European soccer (football, to them), the highest of high honors is the UEFA Champions League trophy. It’s a tournament that involves the top one to four teams from each of Europe’s professional leagues.
In addition to getting to hoist the trophy and walk away with medals, players for Liverpool, this year’s Champions League victor, got another shiny gift to remember the win.
All 27 players on the squad, as well as manager Jurgen Klopp, received a customized 24k gold-plated iPhone X. They look like actual gold bars, but you can FaceTime your friends or play Candy Crush or whatever.
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The phones were designed and created by iDesign Gold, and are worth between about $2,900 and $4,500 a piece, according to Sport Bible. They’ve been pretty popular with soccer players from all around the world, too. So it wasn’t like this gift was totally out of the blue.
The company had previously worked with Liverpool players on a private level, creating custom decorated items for players like Virgil Van Dijk and Roberto Firmino, as well as other big name players like Lionel Messi.
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Here’s the wildest part about this: This business is built entirely on the look of luxury, and its clientele is made up of some of the highest profile athletes in the world. You have guys like Connor McGregor, the literal opposite of quiet dignity, rocking one of these bad boys. And the company was started only three years ago by a guy in a homeless shelter in Scotland after his first business venture failed when he was 23.
That is a story of success for all involved. (Except the team Liverpool beat, Tottenham Hotspur, of which one unnamed PM editor is a frustrated supporter.)
