[50GFSE] #27 - Coventry City 1987-89 Home Shirt by Hummel

It's often the case that when one inspects some of the most iconic designs in kit history, despite usually being remembered for one particular team (Holland '88 for example), they were actually just a standard template of the time, ultimately used by all and sundry. The aforementioned Netherlands shirt saw action not just on the backs of USSR and West German players, but also a host of German non-league sides.

The same applies to one of the other most sited classic designs, that of the Denmark '86 half-and-half shirt. While this doesn't seem to have been used for any other national teams, it certainly adorned a lot of club sides around Europe. Strangely though, it wasn't until a whole season later that that template would land on UK shores, and by that point it had been applied to Aston Villa (for both their home and away shirts), Southampton and this entry, Coventry City.

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It was asked in our first 50GFSE podcast whether having a national shirt template for your club felt somewhat demeaning and my immediate response was an overwhelming 'No!', citing this beauty as my prime example. Indeed, once Coventry had announced they were to be supplied by the Danish manufacturer, I hoped and hoped for a version of this template.

When I finally saw it, my hope turned to massive disappointment... it was dark blue!!! At the time, I attended the same school as George Curtis' son and one summer '87 evening, we were playing football on our local green. Up rocked Curtis Jr, wearing the new kit... and it was dark blue! Clearly this was not to be the final design as it was of course a sky blue version that the team finally ran out in come August.

There's not much to say about the design as it is an exact copy of the famous Denmark '86 one, but rendered in sky blue. The left side is alternating sky blue / darker sky blue stripes and the right is sky blue / white. The sleeves follow the reverse and the shoulders consist of the iconic Hummel chevrons all the way down.

So, why this version and not any other?  While I think the Villa version was brilliant, this one pips it as it's not only a beautiful shirt, but also my absolute favourite Sky Blue shirt of all time. More so, where other implementations seemed to be at odds with the club's usual designs (especially Villa's), for Coventry it actually perfectly combined the two themes the club seemed to alternate between: blue and white stripes and all sky blue shirts. Rather than create a kit that jarred with tradition, it remains the only CCFC shirt to actually fall in both camps.

Sadly, its seeming lack of commitment to either cause could be why it's usually regarded as one of the fans' least favourite shirts... or maybe the world just wasn't quite ready for such levels of wackiness. Ironic, given this was just before the insanity of the 1990's.

People... so fickle...


 
Written by Rich Johnson (The Football Attic).

This shirt is part of The 50 Greatest Football Shirts Ever. The full list can be viewed here.

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It's all about the money, money, money...

I awoke this morning (in Australia, before you ask) to the rather startling news that Raheem Sterling has signed for Manchester City from Liverpool for the princely sum of £49 million. Why I should be startled, I don't know, because ridiculous sums of money like this have been bandied around in the gutter press for some time now. Maybe it's just the reality of seeing that figure in real print right before my eyes:

£49 MILLION

Staggering, really - not least because if you think about it, Raheem Sterling is now worth the same as 49 Trevor Francis's. Imagine a big squad of 49 players, all of which are clones of Trevor Francis, all wearing the pale blue of Manchester City.

Strangely enough, Francis moved to Man City for £1.2 million in 1981, but that's to over-complicate a metaphor using Francis at the time of his landmark move to Nottingham Forest the year before.

So, Sterling = 49 x Trevor Francis, to use mathematical terms. If you think that's eye-popping, however, here's some other comparisons with record breaking transfers. Raheem Sterling is also worth the same as:

1.5 x Robinho (Real Madrid to Manchester City)
3.3 x Alan Shearer (Blackburn to Newcastle)
6.5 x Dennis Bergkamp (Internazionale to Arsenal)
15.3 x Ian Rush (Liverpool to Juventus)
21.3 x Mark Hughes (Man United to Barcelona)
98 x Kevin Keegan (Liverpool to Hamburg)
297 x Allan Clarke (Leicester to Leeds)
426 x Denis Law (Torino to Man United)

...and so it goes on. But to be fair to Sterling (and that's not a phrase you hear very often), he's not the first to have such comparisons made. If you think about it, when Trevor Francis moved from Birmingham to Nottingham Forest, he was worth the same as:

2 x Kevin Keegan (Liverpool to Hamburg)
5 x Martin Peters (West Ham to Tottenham)
10 x Denis Law (Man City to Torino)
50 x Tommy Lawton (Chelsea to Notts County)

...so it's all a matter of perspective.

Then again, we're missing the economical elephant in the room, namely inflation. How much money would Trevor Francis have been worth if his move to Nottingham Forest had taken place today? The answer: well over £4,500,000 - still well short of Raheem Sterling's signing-on fee.

Here's some other approximate inflation-adjusted landmark signings from down the years:

Len Shackleton (Newcastle to Sunderland, 1948) = £720,000
John Charles (Leeds to Juventus, 1957) = £1,500,000
Alan Ball (Arsenal to Everton, 1971) = £3,100,000
Bob Latchford (Birmingham to Everton, 1974) = £3,800,000
Bryan Robson (West Brom to Man United, 1981) = £5,800,000
Chris Waddle (Tottenham to Marseille, 1987) = £11,200,000
Andy Cole (Newcastle to Man United, 1995) = £12,500,000

So many numbers, so much to analyse... and yet we can still arrive at the same conclusion we had at the start - £49,000,000 is a hell of a lot of money. Obscene, as a matter of fact, though it pains me to say it.

Perhaps the owners of Man City should just buy Greece instead? They'd get more value for their money, and have the satisfaction of qualifying as an entire country for the next European Championships. Tune in next week for another world problem solved by 'yours truly' at The Football Attic.

-- Chris Oakley

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[50GFSE] #28 - Evian Thonon Gaillard 2011-12 Home Shirt by Kappa

Some football shirts have made this list by virtue of having a simple, but classic design, some by becoming memorable through exposure in a major tournament, while others have arrived here by being memorable purely by their distinct looks or features.

This entry in our Top 50 falls firmly in the last of those categories.

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As of next season, Evian TG - Évian Thonon Gaillard to give them their full name - will play in the French Ligue 2, having been relegated from the top flight at the end of 2014-15, but their story is a rather interesting one, having only formed 12 years ago. As such, they must surely rank as the newest club on this list.

They were originally called Football Croix-de-Savoie 74 as a result of a merger between FC Gaillard (who had actually been around since 1923) and FC Ville-la-Grand. In 2007, they merged with another team, Olympique Thonon-Chablais and subsequently, they became known as Olympique Croix-de-Savoie 74.

So where does the Evian part come into all this?

Well let's get the obvious out of the way... Yes, the Evian in the name IS the same as the brand of overpriced, bottled H2O. The owners of the club are the Danone Group, owner of the Evian brand and in 2009, the president of the Groupe Danone, Franck Riboud, was made honorary president. He then changed the name of the club to its current incarnation.

Enough of the history lesson... Why is this shirt on the list?  Just look at it!!!! OK, so it might require more justification that that...

Firstly, it's pink. Not enough football shirts are pink. Palermo fly the flag and look great doing so. Evian TG's shirts are something else and what makes them stand out is that Evian connection. Aside from the colour taken from the Evian corporate palette. right there on the front of the shirt, proud as anything, is the familiar Evian 'three mountains' logo. What I love about it is it doesn't just look like a mountain range... it also reminds me of several shark teeth, jutting jaggedly towards the players' necks.

So what else?  Most of Evian TG's shirts are pink and feature the mountains, so why this one? For me, what sets this apart is the fade effect on the pink, gradually turning to white at the bottom. Secondly, the blue trim. Pink can be hard to pair with another colour. The aforementioned Palermo successfully marry pink with black, adding an ominous air to what could be regarded as a predominantly feminine colour. ETG on the other hand, have opted for a vibrant blue, which seems to emphasise the boldness of the pink, rather than contrast with it.

The final reason this shirt makes the list can be summed up in one word - sponsors. Sorry, SPONSORS!!! For there are many... Given the whole shirt is in effect a walking Evian billboard, that doesn't mean other brands don't get a look in for the shirt is blessed with a further four company names writ large in various places. But it's the main sponsor that truly makes this shirt great. Those sharky mountains bathed in their corporate pink goodness. Water great combination. (Ahem...)

 
Written by Rich Johnson (The Football Attic).

This shirt is part of The 50 Greatest Football Shirts Ever. The full list can be viewed here.

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[50GFSE] #29 - West Ham United 1976-80 Home Shirt by Admiral

Somebody call Admiral. No, not the car insurance company. Somebody call the legendary football kit manufacturers of the same name. They're needed back in modern football where they used to be... BADLY.

Actually, they're needed back in modern football with all of the ingenuity, creativity and boldness they possessed back in the 1970's. Is that too much to ask? It's just that today's football kits often have an air of bland conformity, designed with one thing in mind - to offend as few people as possible. At least that's my view.

Admiral knew the time was right to shake British football out of its design coma four decades ago. What it brought to the table was a reinvention of the way football teams looked out on the pitch and the way fans looked away from the match.

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One miraculous example was the kit they provided for West Ham United at the start of the 1976-77 season, and the shirt that provided the most eye-catching element of it. In short, it featured chevrons; four thin claret-coloured v-shaped lines on a v-shaped light blue yolk covering the upper body. There's little anecdotal evidence as to the effect this new shirt created 39 years ago, but by all estimations, it must have been huge.

Like so many of Admiral's football shirt designs of the Seventies, this one had a distinction that had rarely been seen before. No other team had worn anything like it (the closest being a large 'V', perhaps), and few other teams wore the same template at the time. Only Sheffield United followed suit by adopting the Admiral chevrons between 1977 and 1979, and even then it was without the aid of the upper body panel in a contrasting colour.

With beautifully styled stripes on the cuffs and the fashionably large collar, this shirt dared to not only give West Ham their traditional light blue sleeves but also light blue on much of the shirt too. Such a change in balance in the use of club colours on a shirt can cause discontent among fans. It's happened on a number of occasions in recent years, but back in the late-1970's there were plenty of West Ham supporters that were only too pleased to see an injection of fashion livening up their team's kit. I count myself as one of them.

But let's go back to those chevrons. Pretty groovy, weren't they? And you may be wondering why they weren't seen more often back in the day. Well in many ways, they were - but not on the team shirts.

Instead, you'll have to look at some of the tracksuits Admiral were making for teams all those years ago. The evidence is there for all to see, whether it be at the 1976 FA Cup Final, Wales playing Yugoslavia in the same year, or just John Bond getting his official team photo taken at Carrow Road. Whatever the colour combinations, those chevrons looked sensational, but only West Ham wore them proudly on a regular basis out on the pitch.

And what was that opening line - "we need them back in modern football where they used to be"? Well beyond the radar of most people's awareness, Admiral are taking steps to do just that. Over in the United States, one team, the Charlotte Eagles, launched their new Admiral kit a few years ago, and it had a familiar look. There, in simplified form, were some chevrons in orange, white and black. Reworked for 2012, it proved that Admiral still had an eye for great design but hadn't forgotten their rich heritage.

Amen to that, and all power to them, say I.

Written by Chris Oakley (The Football Attic).

This shirt is part of The 50 Greatest Football Shirts Ever. The full list can be viewed here.

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[50GFSE] #30 - Saint-Étienne 1981-82 Home Shirt by Le Coq Sportif

The iconic French side Saint-Etienne (pronounced ‘center gen’ as we are reliably informed by our resident Frenchman, Jay) have had so many sublime kits over the years its difficult to pinpoint just one to be elevated to greatness. The 70's classic with tricolore trim is just one example of how ‘Les Verts’ dominated French football fashion at the time. But for me the 1980-84 Le Coq Sportif long-sleeved home shirt is truly an item of apparel to be marvelled at.

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It's a jersey that is as confident, bold and stylish as the team that wore it (which of course included a young Michel Platini who helped the side clinch the 1980-81 Ligue 1 crown). You may remember the French 1980-84 adidas home shirt that made it into our countdown last week? This shirt is a close relative and features a similar collar/white insert panel combo; the white insert standing out like a beacon amidst a field of green. This shirt also features pinstripes, but in a sartorial statement that took us in England a good couple of years to catch up on, they were placed horizontally! And in pairs! And they continued on the collar! Incroyable!

As if that wasn't good enough the logo of club sponsors ‘Super Tele’ (a French pop/TV magazine) is frankly enormous and plastered over the shirt in an example of blatant and arrogant commercialism. To some it may be ugly, to me, its beautiful! France embraced the common sense of sponsorship early on and in fact, all French sponsors’ logos at the time were huge including that of KB Jardin who took over the shirt deal from Super Tele in 1981 and continued on this jersey until it was mothballed at the end of the 1983-84 season.

From a retro perspective there’s something about a massive ‘in your face’ sponsors logo that is inherently cool - and the fact that in this instance it's on arguably the coolest shirt of the coolest team in France is perfectly fitting.

Written by John Devlin, founder and illustrator of TrueColoursFootballKits.com.

John can be found on Twitter and True Colours is also on Facebook.

This shirt is part of The 50 Greatest Football Shirts Ever. The full list can be viewed here.

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The Football Attic Podcast 25 - 50GFSE 40-31

It's time for the second podcast in the Greatest Football Shirts Ever series and today we're covering shirts 40-31!

Prepare for nearly 2 (two) hours of kitchat, which is a bit like a KitKat, but with 40 fingers...er...

So grab a beer or a horlicks and settle in for nerd nirvana! Booyakasha!

Subscribe to The Football Attic Podcast on iTunes or download our podcast here.

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[50GFSE] #32 & #31 - USA 1994 Home & Away Shirts by adidas

Some things in life are great, not so much vicariously, but because something else exists (also consequently great). For example, certain film trilogies - you can watch one of the series but you enjoy it, generally, with the knowledge of the two others and their content - Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy - natch - and the careers of Blur and Oasis - both bands were bound for stardom but achieved greatness through dovetailing. Y’know what, the Holy Spirit wouldn’t be all that without the Father and the Son either.

Numbers 32 and 31 in our list demonstrate this principle. The two USA shirts worn at the USA '94 World Cup in the USA - what I'm getting at is "U-S-A! U-S-A!" - carry enormous merit in their own right, but it is as a pair, a tag team referencing the American national flag, that they nail it.

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It is perhaps incongruous that we place the Home shirt at number 32. Not only is this committing the traditionalists' cardinal sin of placing elevated importance on the change shirt rather than the ostensible first choice colours, but it also means we discuss Old Glory's stripes before its stars. In fact, the only benefit of this ordering is the agreeable flow of this article's title.

Because, yes, the USMNT Home shirt in 1994 was actually the wavy red and white striped example, and not the "denim" starred version worn in the United States' three group games. With the latter so notorious, not a lot of people know that, and herein lies a true injustice.

Constantly in its other half's shadow, like Victoria in relation to David Beckham, few people realise how refined and knowing the perceived lesser partner is. With subtly waved stripes suggesting the fluttering of the flag of the United States of America, and this theme echoed on the collar and cuffs which had been trimmed more conservatively on contemporary equivalents, this marvellous twist on a perennially obstinate habitué of kit styles - the immovable vertical stripes - would actually also have been a fabulous way to outfit CD Guadalajara (Chivas) of Mexico.

However, the fact that this shirt is my own personal favourite of the two is a moot point - and the minutiae of Chris, Rich, John and I's decision-making processes is not something I'll bore you with - as there's no "I" in "equally and mutually complementary dual component release football jerseys". The Home without the Away is not nothing - far from it - but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.



The Away - that shirt - has been written about in great detail elsewhere, but suffice to say it is one of the most controversial shirts ever, certainly in purist circles*. The all-American denim stylings (in reality a sublimation effect on a shirt similarly densely textured to its Home collaborator) appalled many but continue to excite collectors and kit historians to this day. But its importance goes far beyond its '90s exuberance and Luddite-goading, as it carried the starred side of a very special coin.

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The famous "denim" shirt and the criminally underrated striped Home represented not just the US Soccer Federation, but also the American nation as it dealt with the pressure of entertaining - in every sense - and this inseparable duo were designed to inspire and tug at the heartstrings of the US public and get the rest of the world on board. The Away had the stars, the Home had the stripes, and together they waved over the land of the free and the home of the brave.

As adidas's partner, Fifa, took its showpiece tournament to a previously insufficiently tapped market, the German manufacturer made one last marketing statement - with several beneficiaries - before the USSF contract was taken over by Nike.

Two shirts, one mission. As far as football shirt design goes: mission accomplished.

*The purists really would have been up in arms had the shirt been paired with a denim-styled pair of shorts trialled in a game prior to the World Cup. Football wasn't ready for double denim on the pitch just yet and Home plain blue shorts and rich red Aways were used, and swapped, at the tournament proper.



Written by Jay, resident blogger on DesignFootball.com.

Jay can be found on Twitter and DesignFootball.com are on Facebook and Twitter.

This shirt is part of The 50 Greatest Football Shirts Ever. The full list can be viewed here.

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Soccer Monthly (No. 1, September 1978)

"Produced by the same team as that behind the widely read weekly magazine SHOOT", Soccer Monthly aimed to provide some weightier reading matter for football fans of all ages. In reality, it was most fly over the heads of young readers or their older brothers, appealing mainly to their dads, in all probability. There was text - LOTS of text - to be read, and were it not for the free wallchart given away in issue 1, it's hard to imagine many young kids being excited by that prospect.

That's not to say there was a lack of effort being made by the writing staff, many of whom were 'top names' from Fleet Street. Every article crammed into its 62 pages seemed thorough to the point where you feel it could have filled the entire magazine on its own, were it not for some judicious editing.

Opening with an article by James Lawton called 'Money Can Buy Success', we get our first taste of the many sprawling, rambling features that were to come. It takes the ever-increasing transfer fees for top players as its subject, but never really reaches much of a conclusion, other than suggesting some managers have better luck in getting good players in return for a huge outlay.

'See You Later - In Mexico or Moscow' by John Moynihan is even more discursive. Amounting to little more than an essay on superfans that follow their team all over the globe, the text is flabby, awkward and largely lacking in insight.

Other articles manage to provide a detailed profile of teams ('A Century of Magic' about Manchester United) or individuals ('Can [Ron] Greenwood's Dream Become A Reality?'), but even these items struggle slightly to balance useful knowledge with unnecessary waffle.

An interesting context for all this wordage is the 1978 World Cup, which permeates many of the pages of this first edition of Soccer Monthly. Clearly, the action seen in Argentina only a few months previously was an exciting counterpoint to the rigours of the Football League, and there was much comment on how the two compared.

'What Have We Learned From The World Cup?' suggests that fans never get to see their favourite clubs adopting the dynamic playing styles of international football, as if that's what fans always expect:

"...Will the coaches, managers and players who watched the 1978 World Cup Finals return to domestic football with the same determination to emulate what they have seen?  Past World Cups have also excited and delighted fans and footballers alike. But too often, once the tournament ended, the initial enthusiasm waned. Supporters, hoping to see new innovations at club level, were disappointed."

Personally, I doubt there were too many West Brom or Derby fans expecting their team to adopt the 'Total Football' style of Holland or the speedy counter-attacking style of Argentina in the wake of the 1978 tournament. For those that were, however, a reason for this supposed lack of commitment to change was provided two pages later. It turns out that national team tactics are different to domestic club tactics, and therefore players find it difficult changing from one style of play to the other. Well that's that little misunderstanding sorted, then.

Elsewhere, Peter Batt ("that well-known, irreverent Fleet Street columnist who hits hard... with a smile") used a whole page to criticise TV pundits before admitting that deep down, he liked them really.

"When the World Cup screening hours were finally totted up, they amounted to a staggering 120. That means that between them, the combined TV commentators and chatter-uppers talked us into, through, out of and back over what was the equivalent of almost two full season's fixtures for a league club" said Batt. Clearly he hadn't had a chance to read through the finished first issue of Soccer Monthly yet.

Among the copious accounts of football's vintage era where players like Dixie Dean and Jackie Milburn loomed large, the two most interesting pieces were saved for the modern-day football of 1978.

'Wigan Get Their Sums Right' was an enlightening summary of how, through diligent accounting, Wigan Athletic gained their place in the Football League Fourth Division. It happened in June 1978 when Southport finished in 91st position in the Football League for the third season running. Having been re-elected on the first two occasions, they were unable to retain their place on the third, whereupon Wigan Athletic took their spot.

According to the Soccer Monthly article, this came as a result of non-league teams being better organised in their application for a league place: "Where they once suffered because too many clubs applied for election at the same time and wasted votes, they now put forward two nominations - one from the north and one from the south." Such was the parlous state of Southport, even Bath City (the southern nomination) picked up more votes in the first ballot than Southport got in the second.

But why were non-league clubs being looked upon more favourably when it came to election time? "Staggering as it may seem, there are non-League clubs in business today whose balance sheets at the end of a season put many League clubs to shame" said the article. Arthur Horrocks, managing director of a Wigan travel firm explained it thus: "We knew what was required. So we trimmed our expenses and scrapped the reserve team. Even the age-old custom of entertaining visiting directors after a match was examined and we decided to pay such expenses out of our own pocket."

The age-old custom of the 'old pals act' endlessly bailing out debt-ridden League clubs appeared, therefore, to be coming to an end, but alas this turned out to be a false dawn. No further clubs lost their place in the Football League in such circumstances until automatic promotion and relegation was introduced in 1986.

'Transatlantic Francis' highlighted an altogether different challenge for League teams back in the day, namely how to stop their best players signing for NASL clubs. In the case of Birmingham City, the answer was to allow a player of Trevor Francis' quality to be loaned out for a short spell.

Francis was still one year away from his ground-breaking £1 million move to Nottingham Forest, but back in the summer of 1978, many Birmingham fans thought his St Andrews days were over. As it turned out, his manager, Jim Smith, thought it better that he headed Stateside to earn a big summer wage and return to the Midlands shortly after the resumption of the new Football League season.

This he did, but not before soaking up all the adulation that the NASL had to offer with his new club, Detroit Express: "The crowd have been fabulous to me at Detroit. They come over and say a lot of nice things after the game and really seem to appreciate what I try to do on the field. Every time I get the ball, the commentator goes crazy and calls me 'Trevor Francis, Superstar.'"

At the age of only 24, Francis was enjoying the best of both worlds on either side of the Atlantic, but his life was to change immeasurably in February 1979. Brian Clough wanted a star striker to boost Nottingham Forest's push for European glory, and so it was that Trevor Francis returned to the UK as the first ever £1 million transfer between two English clubs.

Birmingham's fans were right to fear their hero's imminent departure, but Francis' star was clearly in the ascendancy. Soccer Monthly, meanwhile, had at least captured a brief snapshot of the man at a critical point in his career, and in so doing went some way to redeeming itself in what was a far from perfect first issue. Unfortunately, much like Trevor Francis at Birmingham, the magazine was also to be short-lived. During 1980, it was incorporated into Shoot! like so many other failed publications and shortly after was never to be seen again.

Soccer Monthly - a curious mish-mash of articles aimed squarely at the older reader, but often lacking the quality writing they demanded.

-- by Chris Oakley

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[50GFSE] #33 - Olympique de Marseille 2011-12 Away Shirt by adidas

If I had my way, this shirt would have been much higher up the list... probably not Top 10, but somewhere just outside. This is the trouble with democracy - you have to take other people's opinions into account.

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Rather than be a weakness, I believe this divisiveness is one of this shirt's greatest strengths. With kit life-cycles now generally being no longer than one season, we live in a world with thousands of forgotten designs... kits that did the job, but passed us by, never to be remembered.

On the flip side, we have shirts such as Warrior's Liverpool 'Horace goes skiing' / Space Invader efforts. Truly divisive shirts, albeit with the majority in the 'burn it' camp, but even now, several seasons later, we still remember them. Anyone recall the LFC away shirt from the season before? Or after?

And so it came to be that, despite being one of my all time favourite shirts, it languishes here at 33.

As for the shirt itself, the idea is certainly not new. Quite a few shirts have had similar prints. 1860 Munich and Fenerbahce both have shirts in their locker with all-over prints bearing imagery from the club or town's culture, albeit as the inside print in a reversible shirt... so what makes this one my favourite?

Aside from the fact that blue is my favourite colour and I think gold works beautifully with it (the Italy '06 shirt with its mid / dark blue hues and gold numbering was the one that rekindled my love of shirt design), this outfit arrived at a time when French clubs were getting some truly outrageous designs. Adidas, while giving English clubs mostly dull templates, were serving up some truly original (some would say awful) shirts - in particular Lyon and Marseille - and this remains my favourite of that era.

Rendered in a gorgeous tone of blue, with all trim, right down to the crest and Adidas logo, in gold, it has a luxury (some would say gaudy, but they would be wrong) feel to it. But what makes it for me is that print. Depicting images of the club's and moreover, its fan's cultural heritage, it turns a run of the mill shirt into something special... though clearly not that special for John, Chris and Jay.

Bah humbug!



Written by Rich Johnson (The Football Attic).

This shirt is part of The 50 Greatest Football Shirts Ever. The full list can be viewed here.

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[50GFSE] #34 - Rangers 1987-90 Home Shirt by Umbro

Often in the world of football kit design, the basic, perhaps primitive ideas of yesteryear are dismissed as being too old-fashioned or simplistic. This should never happen, for today's kits have all evolved from those same ground-breaking designs. It's the responsibility of all of us to remember the best of what went before.

This is certainly true of Rangers' home shirt, worn for the last few years of the 1980's. As had been the case since at least the mid-1970's, Umbro were the manufacturers, but here, at last, their latest design was heading in a new, dynamic direction.

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In the few years leading up to 1987, the famous blue Rangers shirt had started to look a little tired, relying on a couple of Umbro’s less inspiring templates for any real excitement. Now, they had a beautiful yet simple checker-board shadow pattern with merely a thin strip of white piping to offset it on the shoulders. There was also a new collar - a round neck with button-up fastening as seen on the England home kit of the same era. Again, understated, but beautifully executed.

The master stroke, however, lay in that shadow pattern. Subtle enough as to not be a coloured feature in the traditional way, it was noticeable from virtually any angle, almost all of the time. Take a look at any Rangers photograph from the era and you’ll see that repeating pattern of alternately shaded squares. It became the main feature of the shirt despite only being a result of the fabric being weaved in different directions.

Other shadow patterns from the late-1980s weren't quite so distinctive; too slight to register on the consciousness of football fans. This one, however, reflected the light perfectly, demanding to be noticed and gaining everyone’s full attention.

As if to reinforce the quality of the design, a succession of quality players were seen wearing it: Graeme Souness, Jimmy Nicholl, Mark Hateley, Davie Cooper, Terry Butcher, Trevor Francis, Ray Wilkins… If ever a shirt was going to get a huge amount of exposure, this was it, and yet the shirt sold itself effortlessly without their help.

In closing, I'm proud to admit that I was the proud owner of a Rangers shirt in my late teens. I wasn't a Rangers supporter, although I did once select the Ibrox club as my favourite Scottish team from those attached to my Shoot! League Ladders. No, for me the Umbro checker-board shirt was a purchase made out of pure admiration for the style it embodied. I wore it while playing football with my mates at the local park, and it made me feel grand. In so saying, I can think of no better tribute to this wonderful football shirt.


 
Written by Chris Oakley (The Football Attic).

This shirt is part of The 50 Greatest Football Shirts Ever. The full list can be viewed here.

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