Videoblog 8: Chris O's Football Shirts

Here at The Football Attic, it's not just Rich J who's owned a considerable number of footy shirts in his time. Chris O's bought a few down the years as well, and to prove the point, here he is to tell you all about the shirts he's owned in our eighth (and last) Videoblog.

An avid West Ham supporter, many of Chris' shirts are naturally of the claret-and-blue variety, but you'll be mistaken for thinking that he's confined his choices to the Upton Park club only. Watch the video and find out which other shirts he's proudly worn (in the presence of a sporting great, in one example...)

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Welcome to The 50 Greatest Football Shirts Ever

For too long, people have poked fun at football kits that we're reliably informed are badly designed, garishly coloured or just plain ridiculous. Look around on the web and it won't be long before you stumble upon the usual blog articles; someone describing why Jorge Campos always looked stupid in his dayglo outfits or why David Seaman's Euro 96 kit was terrible... and that's if you're lucky enough to get a description at all.

Quite honestly, we think you deserve better, and to that end we're launching an antidote to this endless stream of puerile banality. We bring you, The 50 Greatest Football Shirts Ever.

Every day for the next seven weeks or so, we'll be bringing you a blog post that highlights the brilliance of football shirt design. From shadow patterns to subtlety, from commemorative shirts to controversial shirts, we'll be telling you about the great and the good from a world of colour, creativity and sometimes sheer genius.

And we say 'we' with good reason. Rather than just being a Football Attic series, we thought we'd team up with two people who know more about kit design than the rest of those naysayers put together.

First of all, there's our good friend Jay, resident blogger at DesignFootball.com and a man with a discerning eye for good football shirt design. There's also John Devlin, author of the football kit bibles 'True Colours (Volume 1 and 2)' and someone who understands the detail of a football shirt - because at some point he's probably had to illustrate it!

Together, the four of us, along with a few special guest writers, have taken the time and effort to explain why 50 football shirts are great in the hope that you'll see their design in a different way. And to help you keep track of which shirts have featured in our countdown, we've created a page that lists each and every one, along with an explanation of how this series came about.

The 50 Greatest Football Shirts Ever begins tomorrow, and we encourage you to get involved by sending us your feedback and comments. We hope you enjoy it!

-- Chris and Rich

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Attic Kit Collection Book Available Again

For anyone who missed out first time round, the Attic Kit Collection Book is available again for a limited time! 

If you want one, I need to know by next Friday (12th June 2015).

The original info for the book is below.

It's been a long time coming with many, many, MANY weekends spent photographing kits, editing said photos and then writing stuff about each one, but it's finally here!

The finished product is a 98-page hardback featuring over 200 different kits (almost my entire collection).

 

The price is £29.99 + P&P 

Not cheap I know, but that's economies of scale for you...

UK Postage is £4. If you're outside the UK, I'll give you a postage quote before you commit.

So, if you want one, fill in the form below and I'll contact you to sort out payment.

-- Rich Johnson

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Changing your stripes

Thumbing through an issue of Football League Review the other day, I stumbled upon an article that caught my eye. 'Inquiry: Are the club colours getting too drab?' was its title, and it surmised that the day of the 'fancy' football shirt seemed to be all but dead and buried.

Written in the first few weeks of the 1968/69 season by Bob Baldwin, it opened with the line: "Whatever happened to the Turquoise Blues, the Gold and Royal Blues and the Claret Bodies with Amber Yolks?" It went on: "These descriptive colour blends are not taken from a Paris fashion catalogue. They come from a pre-war list of official League club strips. Times have changed. Two-thirds of the clubs now use the more sober use of reds, blues or whites. Colour has gone from the game."

Intriguing. Was I to believe that the early 20th Century was a technicolor carnival of a million rainbow hues?

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Wrong numbers?

Football is a game of numbers. Scorelines feature numbers, league tables feature numbers, Gareth Bale's bank balance features numbers (quite a few, actually). Perhaps the most important numbers, however, are those featured on the backs of the shirts worn by the players. Shirt numbers have been around since 1928 and though they've been somewhat crowded out by sponsor names, player names and all manner of other paraphernalia, they remain an important feature of any football shirt.

The future might be bright, but it didn't feature shirt
numbers on the front for Halifax Town

These days, you'll also see numbers on the front of the shirts when there's a major international tournament taking place, the World Cup adopting that idea in 1994. This wasn't the first time it had been tried, however. Halifax Town were pioneers of the 'number on the front' way back in 1971 when they played in the Watney Cup competition against the likes of Manchester United and West Bromwich Albion. Halifax, sporting a recently introduced kit of orange shirts and blue shorts, looked a little peculiar as they tried to set their numerical trend, and predictably enough it didn't seem to catch on to any great extent.

Francis Lee adopts the gridiron look in November 1972.

Similarly, a variation of the theme also failed to stick beyond the 1972/73 season when Manchester City wore a change strip featuring numbers on the shirt sleeves. Looking more like an American football shirt, these numbers looked good enough alright, but perhaps were a little ostentatious. On a more practical level, it begs the question "Where's a number best located?"  Presumably shirt numbers are used mostly by the ref for disciplinary situations when identification of a specific player is most important. Having a number on both sleeves, however, seems slightly excessive, one could argue.

Kenny Dalglish celebrates numbers on shorts during
the 1973 Scottish Cup Final.

Of course numbers aren't just confined to the football shirt. Numbers on shorts are not uncommon, and for a twist on that tradition, one need only look to Celtic who for many years wore numbers not only on the front of the shorts but on the backs too. The fact that they wore numbers on the shorts at all came about because (if Wikipedia is to be believed) Robert Kelly, former chairman of the club, couldn't bare to see the famous green and white hoops obscured in any way shape or form, so onto the shorts they went.

Billy Bremner looks for someone to hug that also
loves blue sock tags.

The last bastion for number wearing, it seems, is on the socks. When it comes to that piece of apparel, there was only one team setting a trend back in the 1970s, and that was Leeds United. Don Revie's team raised a few eyebrows in the early part of the decade when they were seen sporting blue tags that were stitched into the socks complete with player numbers and frilly white tassels. Another example of style over substance, it was nothing if not original but ultimately added to the cannon of trends that never quite caught on.

Middlesbrough v Coventry 1974: Too clever by calf

The same can be said of Middlesbrough who certainly showed just as much creativity with a neat variation on the numbered sock tags back in 1974. On at least one occasion, they appeared to wear red socks with numbers stitched into the backs of the turnovers, apparently embroidered in as part of the sock fabric itself.

Though just as gimmicky, there's no denying that this was perhaps the most original slant on the 1970's obsession with finding a new way to display a player's number... even if it did require the socks to stay up throughout the entire match to fulfil their usefulness.

So what now for numbers? Will we see a revival to match that of four decades ago? Can we expect numbers to be displayed on wrist bands or tattooed into the foreheads of the players of the future?  As the 1970's proved, anything's possible.

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James Taylor's Top 5 World Cup Shirts

There I was all set to create a Top 5 Kits article today and then I received this storming selection from James Campbell Taylor of the excellent site JCT. So sit back and enjoy a feast of kit loveliness!

Italy 1990

This kit will always be special for me, not least because it was the first I ever owned. What's remarkable is that it was the same shirt Italy had worn at the previous World Cup! The only difference that I know of (apart from variations of material based on climate) was that the red and green trim on the collar and cuffs was inverted, with red on the outside. But imagine a World Cup host today not cashing in on the occasion with a brand new kit! Unthinkable. In fact, the Italy shirt barely changed from '81-'91. Purists may opt for the cotton Le Coq Sportif version worn by Bearzot's triumphant '82 side (and it's hard to argue when I think of that Tardelli goal), but for me the "MADE IN ITALY" Diadora shirts were a more stylish fit worthy of the country they represented. This was the last major tournament before names and front numbers appeared on shirts, and the kit has a pure perfection for me. This was also before the FIGC allowed the manufacturer's logo to appear on the kit, a rule that was sadly lifted in 1999. The Azzurri had an excellent team that year too, and trooped out onto the Olimpico turf in dashing tracksuit tops (still trying to get one of these). As perhaps for many people my age, the summer of 1990 was a massive turning point for me in my appreciation of the game and all those other things that come along with it. In Italy they still refer to those World Cup matches as "notti magiche" after the official song of Italia '90.


Brasil 1986

Ironically when I bought my Italy kit in 1990 I'd actually had the intention of buying this shirt, only to find it had been replaced by the '90 version, of which I wasn't quite such a fan. Nineteen years later I finally got my hands on one through an ebay seller located in Malaysia. Sounds fishy, but I know a 100% genuine Topper jersey when I see one. Oddly I think Topper is actually an Argentine company. Like Italy in the same period, the Brazil kit saw minimal changes between '82 and '90, but '86 was always my favourite (although the '82 version could easily be number 3 on this list). Cool badge with the Jules Rimet trophy, great sleek fit and classic numbers too. Even the goalie shirts were great, with "B R A S I L" across the chest. Most of all I love the thought behind the colours themselves. A proper, deep sunshine yellow that darkens with sweat (the shirt is a polyester-cotton blend), forest green trim and shorts a sort of Napoli blue (not royal!) with the little stripes. That's my most consistent gripe with the modern Brazil kits, the yellow is too sterile, the green is too light and the blue is too dark. It's as if Nike's palette doesn't extend beyond the default primary colours that come with whatever primitive computer program they use to design their shirts. Yellow + green + blue = done. So sad.


Argentina 1978

I could have easily gone with the '82 or '86 versions (the less-celebrated '82 kit is probably the nicest if I think about it) but I'm including the '78 version for, well, obvious reasons. This was the last the last World Cup before I was born and I'm not sure if it was the handlebar moustaches, cynical tactics or the political situation in Argentina at the time but no subsequent tournament has been quite as... badass. Amid the ticker tape the hosts wore a now-classic shirt, but this was back when football shirts simply were what they were. I doubt kids in Buenos Aires were salivating at the prospect of what Kempes & Co. would be wearing at El Monumental — they just wanted the team to win. The tight fit, short shorts, long-sleeves and debut of the classic AFA numbers in the second round have sort of made it the model against which all future Argentina shirts have to be compared (I think it's why I liked the long-sleeved techfit version in 2010 so much... man, would I love to own one of those).


Spain 1982

The thing that irritates me most about Spain's recent domination of major tournaments is how suddenly the world is overrun with Spain fans. Where were these people when la Roja used to be routinely knocked out in lacklustre fashion at the quarter-final stage? While the team was less successful, Spain's kits in the '80s were glorious. I used to love the blue shorts (a similar shade to Brazil's actually) and black socks. So cool. I have a hunch that the black socks were a design feature imposed by Franco, which is why they were phased out, but I've never found any hard evidence to support this claim. The navy & navy short-sock combo adopted in the nineties was fine, now more recently they've started wearing red socks. It's just all so... bland and predictable. It's ironic that as kits become more elaborate and detailed so every trace of teams' personalities is being watered down and stripped away. Anyway, going back to happier times: the Le Coq Sportif kits worn in '86 and '90 were lovely, but you cannot beat the Spain '82 kit. I'm sure this outfit would be more fondly remembered by kit lovers had the team not flopped so miserably.


Mexico 1986

I've always been a fan of the Mexico kit, but I'm not sure why. Just always well turned out I suppose, even in recent years (except '98, which isn't so recent now). In 2002 they had a slightly darker green, and the away kit (while not used) was a fantastic burgundy with navy shorts like in 1970. In 2006 they had a cool chevron device on the front (later adopted briefly by Man U unfortunately) and fancy numbers. In 1978 their kit was manufactured by Levi's! Crazy! But if I had to pick one I'd go with '86. While a fairly standard adidas template what elevates the shirt is the wholly unprecedented and totally unnecessary inclusion of the word "MEXICO" above the number (where the player's name would go today). Circa 2005 Nike (then Mexico's kit provider) re-released a "version" of this shirt. There are probably a couple of other reasons why I love this kit. Besides loving that tournament (the long grass, the bright light, the saturated colours) there is also Manuel Negrete's goal against Bulgaria. Or maybe it's because I always think of this song.

So there you have it. I deliberately stuck to kits from the modern era, those pre-1970 didn't really change enough and are obviously too perfect in their simplicity. But surprisingly my choices represent a golden span of a mere twelve years. What's most interesting is that I've included the host nation for all four World Cups from that period! Proof that the hosts are always well-dressed I suppose — although that sequence came to an abrupt end in 1994. The hardest part was separating my appreciation for the kit itself from fondness for the team or era... I could have easily included Italy '94 or Brasil '82, and I am still grappling internally with my inexplicable exclusion of France's '78, '82 and '86 kits. So apologies that these choices are a little safe and hardly obscure. Maybe I should do an alternate list — the B-sides, if you will.


As I was compiling this list I realised that a lot of my favourite international kits are from European Championships. I feel another top five list coming on...

Huge thanks to James for a fine selection there...if you'd like to choose your Top 5 World Cup Kits (or any other tournament for that matter), drop us a line and let us know to admin [at] thefootballattic [dot] com...

More Top 5 World Cup Shirt lists as chosen by other people...

Chris O
Rich J
Al Gordon
Ed Carter
Rich Nelson
Steve Gabb

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Solved! The Mystery of the 96-97 Argentina Shirt

OK, so most of you reading this will a) not be aware there's any kind of mystery around a certain mid-90s Argentina shirt and b) not give a toss, but I DO!

For the past few years, I have been seeing this Argentina shirt all over eBay and it's usually described as the 96-97 shirt. I know this to be inaccurate as I am a complete nerd when it comes to Argentina kits and I happen to know that, between World Cups 94 and 98, AFA had only one other style of shirt... although even that appeared in about 4 different versions!

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon an excellent site, bursting with Argentina-Kit-Nerd-Porn (yeah, I'm uber-niche!) and learned such awesome facts as in 1991, the AFA Youth side wore kits almost identical to the "one off" away outfits the senior side wore against England at Mexico 86!

Perusing that site last night, what lay before me, but that 96-97 shirt! At last I thought, an answer! Except i was on my mobile so couldn't translate it... hours later and my PC screen reveals the truth.

I was right! It never was an official AFA shirt! Turns out it was a proposal Adidas put forward for the 1994 kit, but which was rejected due to the navy pinstripes, the AFA insisting there would be no colour other than the blue and white (4 years later, they finally allowed black detailing on the shirts worn at World Cup 98). So, not only was it not a shirt ever worn by the Argentina side, but had the AFA not been so prickly about a 3rd colour on the shirt, this could have been the outfit worn by Maradona in his last ever match for his country. Personally, I think they made the right call and the one eventually chosen for USA 94 was very classy.

88? Really?

So now you know... and probably still don't care ;-)

Just this one to solve now...

You can read the full article here. And in case you were wondering, I use Google Chrome, which translates it all for me...

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Neil Cotton: Five shirts from my past

In the latest in a long line of excellent guest posts from writers far and wide, The Football Attic welcomes Neil Cotton from the blogsite Row Z. Neil's unearthed some long-forgotten football shirts from his wardrobe and here tells us how he came to own them and the memories they bring back...

The writer and philosopher Walter Benjamin once said that “Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories” and chaotic certainly seems a good word for the football shirt collection which I recently uncovered nestling in an unassuming, perfectly square cardboard box which had in turn spent the best part of a decade residing forgotten at the bottom of a wardrobe. This seemed to be a collection without a theme or any other sense of order, but as I unwrapped each shirt memories came rushing back as if each were a tiny time-capsule.

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Steven Gabb's Top 5... World Cup Shirts

Yet more suggestions for the best World Cup Shirts now from Steven Gabb from the excellent blogsite Spirit of Mirko who has come up with his own mixed bag in more ways than one...

United States (1950, home)

Some kits are classics because they are stylish, others because they were used during a particularly successful era for a team. But to be a true classic I think the perfect storm of a wonderful performance and a great design are required. This is certainly the case for USA's 1950 kit. Not only is it smart - it's a truth universally acknowledged that the best kits feature a sash - the US recorded one of their finest ever international results wearing it, a 1-0 victory over Tom Finney's England.

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I've Got Stripes: The five most wretched striped football shirts of all time

Ed Carter returns with a fabulous guest post all about the place of the striped shirt in football history...

Listeners to the latest Football Attic podcast will now be fully aware that I have become part of the problem. The problem, specifically, is the way the world of football fans dotes on the Peru international kit. But we love sashes. Sashes on kits are brilliant things and, moreover very difficult to mess up.

Stripes, on the other hand, are a different matter. My own team are Brighton and Hove Albion, so I dote on striped shirts. Brighton of course once famously had a kit with striped shorts as well, by way of demonstrating the massive inadvisability of doing that.

There's another magical aspect to striped football shirts of a sort unrelated to sartorial concerns: teams who wear them underachieve magnificently. The last time a team who wore stripes as their first choice kit won the English football league championship was Sunderland in 1935/36 and the last FA Cup winner in stripes were the largely otherwise stripe-free Coventry City in 1987. The last team who are regular striped shirt wearers to prevail in football's oldest competition: Southampton, in 1976. And naturally, they weren't wearing their red and white striped shirts that day... the impossible glamour of the no-hoper is hard to overlook.

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Ed Carter's Top 5... World Cup Shirts

The kits keep on coming as today we welcome Ed Carter's choice of his favourite five World Cup shirts...

1. West Germany (1970, home)

(West) Germany have a virtually unblemished record of brilliant, tasteful football kits. Even when they went completely insane (1990 and 1994) they did so with such panache and style that it was brilliant and the world and Jeff Banks rejoiced. However, for me it's always the plainer the better and the 1970 West German kit is perhaps the most beautiful ever seen in the World Cup finals. Two-tone with simple collar and cuff trim and a brilliant black German eagle badge in a thick black circle. Dutch people would go to their child's wedding wearing this kit.

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Al Gordon's Top 5... World Cup Shirts

Al Gordon from God, Charlton & Punk Rock is the latest fellow blogger to give us his Top 5 World Cup Kits:

1. England (1982 Away)

Once upon a time Admiral set the standard in kit design.  This Leicester based firm had the best logo, the best templates and the best of the clients, England.
Many think the home kit of this era to be the greatest England shirt of all time, yet it is the red away version that I always fondly remember. A quarter past five on the 16th June 1982 we kicked off our World Cup campaign against Platini and the French. A Bryan Robson goal just a minute later and we all really thought it could be ‘This time’ after the disappointment of missing Argentina in 78. It’s interesting to note that both sides wore their away strips although the home ones didn’t clash.

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Rich Nelson's Top 5... World Cup Shirts

Rich Nelson from Nelson's Column and Escape To Suomi has kindly sent us his Top 5 World Cup shirts...

France (1986, Home)

A more refined version of the Euro 84 effort, yet to be replicated (unlike 1998’s copy of '84). The perfect shade of blue, matching with the shorts and socks to complete the Tricolore. Unfortunately this was the beginning of the end of the great French team, along with some really dreadful threads.

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Rich J's Favourite 5... World Cup Shirts

Following on from Chris' Top 5 World Cup Shirts, I present my choices. Just missing out were Denmark '86 (Home) as Chris had chosen the away so I thought I'd find an alternative and West Germany 1990 (Away). A great shirt from a classic design, but just didn't quite make the cut... so, here they are:

1. Argentina (1986, Home)

It’s obvious Mexico 86 would rear its (none too) ugly head with anything I do, but this kit has been more than just a shirt to me - it’s been a lifelong quest. In the same way I spent most of my youth and adulthood trying to track down a Subbuteo World Cup Trophy, a parallel quest was to own this, or more likely, a replica of this shirt – a quest that has mostly been achieved.

There are several things about this shirt that set it above all other Argentina outfits. The centre stripe is white... big deal you say, but Argentina always have the centre stripe blue (I am deliberately ignoring Adidas’ shameless attempt to ape this iconic design at the 2010 World Cup). Big deal, I hear you repeat, but that’s me - I like the small details of these things.

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Chris O's Favourite 5... World Cup Shirts

1. South Africa (1998, home)

I know my taste in virtually everything represents the minority view, but I absolutely loved this kit when it appeared in the 1998 World Cup. Kappa, the manufacturers, showed brilliant originality in weaving together four colours into a mad tapestry the like of which has rarely ever been seen.

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Classic football shirt sponsors

It started as a single Twitter message sent out a couple of days ago by the great football blogger @mirkobolesan. It read:

"Napoli = Mars, Hellas Verona = Canon, Arsenal = JVC, Everton = NEC, Liverpool = Crown Paints, Man United = Sharp. #propersponsors‬"

David Johnson in
action for
Liverpool.

No explanation was needed and none was given, yet everyone knew what was being discussed. Before long, many people (including myself) were chipping in with the company names that somehow seemed synonymous with individual clubs based on former shirt sponsorship deals. It was a discussion that ran and ran.

It’s almost 34 years since Liverpool became the first team to sport a company name on its shirts. It was Japanese hi-fi and TV manufacturers Hitachi that had the honour of starting a trend which would ultimately spread its commercial influence right the way down to 'grass roots' level.

Left: Alan Smith of Arsenal;
Right: Bryan Robson of Man United.

Though Hitachi’s name wasn’t seen on TV when Liverpool played, the partnership lasted four seasons – a long contract that helped forge a lasting association between the two parties. Such an extended bond between team and sponsor can create an inseparable connection in the minds of the fans, especially if they became partners so very long ago. Arsenal’s link-up with JVC in the early 1980’s is another such example, as is Manchester United’s with Sharp Electronics.

Alan Shearer during his
Blackburn Rovers days.

Yet for all that, company sponsors – if lucky enough – can raise their profile hugely if their contract happens to coincide with a winning spell for their football-playing associates. That was the fate that befell McEwans Lager when Blackburn Rovers won the Premier League in 1995, and for many years after. It’s fair to say no-one was offering up ICI Perspex as the name they most strongly associated with the Ewood Park club on Twitter a couple of days ago.

Sometimes, however, you don’t even need a successful era to be forever linked with a particular club. As @mirkobolesan pointed out in his first selection above, Napoli will always be tied with the confectionary company Mars – primarily because the shirt sponsorship deal coincided with the arrival of Diego Maradona in 1984. One could make a similar case for the Italian pasta company Buitoni who shared the sponsorship until 1991, and herein lies an ongoing dilemma.

Diego Maradona showing two
sponsors for Napoli.

If someone asked you to name the shirt sponsor with the most enduring connection to your club, chances are you'll have more than one to choose from. While one Charlton fan will fondly remember the Fads era, another might plump for The Woolwich or Viglen. Manchester City supporter? Maybe Saab are the sponsors for you… or would it be Brother, perhaps?

The more you think of the classic shirt sponsors each team has had, the more your head spins. What makes Hafnia more iconic as an Everton supporter than NEC? If you're from the red half of Merseyside, is Hitachi the ultimate in corporate partners, or would you go for Crown Paints or Candy or Carlsberg?

The importance of a company logo on a team shirt has become more important and more intrinsic to the very spirit of the game than anyone could ever have imagined prior to 1978. Which shirt sponsors would you give honorary status to and for which clubs? Leave us a comment using the link below and give us your thoughts…

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Football Attic FC & The League of Blogs Wallchart

Football Attic FC?  Have Chris and Rich decided to unhang their boots and get back out on the field?  Of course not!

Following on from Chris' excellent article about his days as a teenage kit designer, we decided we ought to have an official Football Attic FC strip. To that end, I got out my crayons (OK, a graphics package) and put together the home shirt.

FAFC 'Home'

Obviously, there may come a time that FAFC will be drawn against another team in... er... brown... maybe St Pauli? This would of course necessitate a change strip. We at the Football Attic are firm believers in using reverse colours for the away kit and our first choice was for a straight reversal of the home design, but, ever the perfectionists, it just seemed a bit too simple. And so, the away kit you see here was born.

FAFC 'Away'

That's all very stylish and suave I hear you say, but what is this League of Blogs Wallchart thing you also mentioned?

Well, it's a natural train of thought that leaves Football Attic Central and journeys across the blogosphere stopping at other football blogs to see what their kits would be like. Given the Football Attic thought train never stays on a straight path for very long, it was only natural to arrive at the decision to create a Football Blog Kit Wallchart.

Here's the deal... We'll shortly be putting up a Subbuteo-style template. Download it, design your blog's kit, send it back to us and we'll compile them all into an awesome wallchart for you to cut out and keep.

Watch this space!

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