Football, football, football. The end of the season is upon us, and what an end in England, with Man U and Chelsea going to the wire for the Premier League and the Champions League, an FA Cup which could go Welsh, and a poor nothing for poor Arsenal. My team, Spurs, we already finished our season with a League Cup, while in France, Paris St Germain could get relegated, at which I will laugh because I also support Marseille. The really exciting thing about this time of the footy calendar though is not all the trophies, relegations, sackings and transfers, but the release of all the new kits for the next year. It’s becoming standard now that clubs release a new home shirt every season, but even I am getting tired of the football kit merry-go-round, and the laughable marketing that surrounds it.
When I was a kid, I used to want to be a kit designer. The late eighties and ealy nineties saw some incredibly daring designs, some instant classics, some instant stomach-churners (Arsenal’s away kit of 1992 springs to mind). Umbro and Adidas were the two leaders of design, and it was an exciting time for innovation and experimentation with new away colours (Liverpool’s green, Arsenal’s blue, Manchester United’s grey/green/yellow/you-name-it). Then, somewhere along the way, it all tapered off, it all just got a bit boring. There are only so many different collar designs. Only so many ways you can do stripes. Only so many old kits from the 50s/60s/70s you can rehash and pretend to be faithful. And so the marketing has to be inventive. For a few years now they’ve been pretending that the material is far more technologically advanced than anything from the previous year, or anything modern humans can even produce without advanced alien technology. Last year it seemed as though every new kit was a ‘commemorative kit’ for something or other: Spurs had their special ‘125 years’ kit, Celtic did the ’40 years since they won the European Cup’ kit (I bought it, incidentally), Barcelona remembered 50 years at Camp Nou, Northern Ireland ‘s kit commemorated, and this is stretching it a bit, 25 years since they were at the Spain World Cup in 1982. To name but a few examples. This year they can’t even be bothered to do that.
Spurs just released their new shirts for 08-09. Since signing with Puma in 2006, Spurs have now had TEN new shirts, not including goalkeeper kits. Last year the only significant change to the kit was the collar became a v-neck. Well this year the only significant change to the home kit is that that v-neck now has a blue trim. That’s another forty quid please, thank you, and don’t forget to put your favourite player’s name on the back, quickly, because he’ll be leaving for a new club in the summer. It’s such an underwhelming design, and yet they release it (in the shops today) with such fanfare, as if this new blue v-neck collar will somehow usher in a new era of prosperity and silverware. We’re not even the worst ones. Borussia Dortmund, for example, brought out three home shirts this season: a regular one, a cup-final one (hier bitte), and a special christmas one (noch wieder?). Oh, and they just release a new one for next year (immer mehr? Scheiss!). To market all these design-a-minute shirts the clubs will try anything, but an interesting trend these days (employed largely by South American teams and lower-league English clubs) is to use female models, rather than players; typical examples here, here and here. You see, terribly exploitative, I cannot approve. There’s another few here. But we the fans still buy them, these unimaginatively designed expensive mobile adverts for bad football and whichever dodgy online chinese casino gives us a few bob to keep lazy want-away Bulgarians in hair bands. I think if football shirts are going to be little more than advertising boards then the fans should get them for free, or at least for very cheap. I’m going to write to Sepp Blatter. I will.
petescully 
Haha, join the revolution – I just wear my favourite of the shirts. I haven’t bought a new sunderland one since we dropped Nike about 5 years ago. Why bother? The Nike one looks nice and I don’t wear them often enough to justify £40 a year. My Barca one is one of the varying special editions, I can’t remember which though.
And you shouldn’t laugh at PSG. Mainly because I support them *and* for some bizzare reason I was in Paris in a dream last night and saw them play on the way to the Louvre. Because that’s a natural itinerary for an evening, naturally.
unfortunately, I predict PSG will stay up. Bof! My other french team (second to l’OM), RC Strasbourg, they are going down. Zut!
The Nike Sunderland kits were nice, but I do like their current umbro home ones (new one just came out). But my all-time favourite Sunderland kit was the one they wore in the 92 cup final against liverpool, the white hummel one with the blue arms and the little white rectangles, and the zig-zag thing.
I never liked the special edition Barcelona ones, like that wierd one with the dark blue halves, my favourite one was around ’92, the home one (and the orange one they won the european cup with that year). Beautiful, all-time classics.
Ah, yes, the new one is rather nice – certainly the best we’ve had for a while. I couldn’t believe all the Lonsdale ones. The white hummel one was great! Haha, I remember that one too.
My barca one is plain with stripes, only it has the big gold circle on one arm with centenery of the nou camp or some such thing on it. The orange one was great, I agree. I always liked that they didn’t have a sponsor too, made them seem a cut above for some reason.
Can you remember the yellow and green Man Utd away kit? I quite liked that one, oddly enough. (Guilty secret – once followed man utd.)
oh, that barcelona one, yes that’s a great kit, it’s exactly as a Barça one should be. And their lack of sponsor, and the fact they are fan-owned, is one of the reasons they’re pretty much the best club in the world. I love spurs but wish we hadn’t prostituted ourselves to a big red online chinese gambling M.
I loved that Man United ‘newton heath’ shirt. Even the laces. It reminds me of Cantona scoring a brilliant goal against wimbledon i think it was.
Ah, yes, the joys of sponsors – I’m not a huge fan of Boyle Sports either, they’re Irish Gambling. (That cheap idea is a good one – it’s so odd that we pay above the odds to be billboards.) But, I accept it because we get lots of other perks with all this Irish involvement. Newcastle Airport on a saturday night is usually full of Irish Sunderland fans.
What’s your favourite Spurs one of all time?
I most remember it for Mark Hughes. Hughes and Cantona. Football used to be pretty amazing, what happened? I mean, I still like it and what not but the players seem pretty bland in comparisson, few big personalities.
favourite spurs one? hmm, i don’t know… i liked the second adidas one we had, with the light blue trim, and i loved the second round of kappa ones. When i was a kid i loved the first hummel one with the arrows all over the place, and the 1981 cup final shirt is a classic, ricky villa etc… But probably i would say the yellow umbro one from the early 90s, with the wierd chess board thing on the sleeve. I just liked it. I have it, but don’t wear it now because I got it signed by klinsmann, sheringham, ossie, barmby, anderton, etc at the mill hill training ground one day, and now i can’t wash it.
My favourite arsenal one is this year’s one, as it will always invoke memories of us beating them 5-1…
And yes, footy back in Cantona’s day was amazingly exciting. Mostly for… Matthew Le Tissier. All those incredible daft goals he’d score. And that silly pony ‘tick’ shirt southampton had.
Le Tissier! Goodness, how many days we spent in the park trying to juggle the ball a few times then volley it from distance. It’s amazing that he never got further with his England career.