Let me outline a kit design fanatic's descent into insanity - assuming, of course, that insanity is not a prerequisite.  First he'll tell you that football fans should have greater input into their teams' kits, via kit design competitions and votes.  Then he'll backtrack, saying kit manufacturers have listened and learnt and we should leave them to it.  Next he'll qualify that assertion, suggesting some fantasy and amateur kit designers are the peers of the professionals.  Finally, as the straight jacket is fastened, he'll scream that amateur kit design leads the way in ingenuity, sartorial restraint and respect for tradition and is now superior to the efforts emanating from Nike, adidas, Puma et al.

The recent evidence gives this opinion some credence.  The Middlesbrough Futsal Club competition (mark II) shows that, when it counts - such an occasion can be defined by a trip to Italy being on offer - DesignFootball.com's members pull out all the stops to produce kits with originality and inspiration the like of which is often lacking from major releases.  The trite exclamation that a five minute Football Manager mockup posted on a club's fan forum is "better than this season's top!" has long been surpassed by far more genuine reactions to far more elaborately and thoughtfully constructed works of genius.  Five years ago no one really would have followed through on their risk-free empty promise that they'd "buy it if they released it!" but now it's accompanied with a yearning for it to come to pass - and is more likely than ever to do just that.

Crucially, amateur kit design no longer relies on the iconography of a major club and the heavy branding of a major manufacturer.  In the early days of DF, the brilliance of the uploads at that time led us to believe we were ready to host a competition for a reasonably famous non-league club.  The competition provided said club with several options which would have bettered their recent kits but the lack of any head start from a heavyweight, trophy-laden history, an instantly recognisable set of club colours or, simply, three stripes or a Swoosh meant the quality dropped drastically and the club eventually went down a different route.  The current, and shortly ending Boro comp now shows that a relatively modest back story and a less well-known manufacturer needn't hold anyone back, and doesn't limit the standard of submissions.  How far we have come.

Even back in the big leagues, if the rumoured new Liverpool (Away and Third) kits prove to be the genuine article then then they are laughably inferior to offerings put forward in our galleries.  Similarly, the underwhelming adidas releases for the "second string" likes of Sunderland, Stoke and West Brom are bettered by the inventive take on stripes that DF members come up with.  Even Nike, despite some wonderful releases - for France in particular - could be construed as running out of ideas, especially as they're now regurgitating templates and themes for the Netherlands, Portugal and Manchester United.  It's an accusation, albeit misguided, that can't be leveled at this site's members.

About a year ago I wrote an article congratulating the football kit design industry.  They had, in my mind, reached a point where we no longer needed to scream at them what we wanted in a kit, no longer needed to plead with them that they treat our club or country's colours with respect.  They had listened and learnt.

That was, as history will clearly show, a sweeping generalisation.  I stand by the sentiment - I believe the last 18 months or so's higher profile kits to be, on average, the best ever - but the professionals still occasionally fall short.  Most importantly, I never wanted to give the impression that DesignFootball.com's members were p*ssing in the wind by having a go themselves.  I might claim to be abandoning "the desire to see football fans involved in the design process, either by way of consultation, kit votes or simply allowing the fans to design the kits themselves in competitions" but in this I refer to everyday schlubs which have an opinion on everything and an answer to nothing.  They have had their say and it's been duly noted.  DF's members are a class apart.

The fear I have with fan involvement is that stagnant simplicity will prevail.  The current Warrior Liverpool Home kit is a prime example.  Fan consultation obviously played a major role - the gold/yellow details and unadorned Liver Bird returned, the collar was simple, there were no cluttered and superfluous added features - and this made for a classic design, but where should it go next?  Football fans, on the whole, are not design fans and will be happy with a straightforward and basic kit every season, with little variation, little excitement and, vitally, little need to purchase a new version each year.

That simply won't do.  So we leave it to the experts, the designers, the people who are passionate about kit design, who study the history of kits meticulously - those who have the experience of their kits being produced and worn on pitches.

So that's that.  An eclectic year in the world of football design packed full of ample good, bad and ugly.  A year when football design intertwined with some of the biggest news stories to ensure 2012 would leave thousands of brightly-attired images indelibly printed on our memories.  Let's take a look back...

The London 2012 Olympics

As cliché'd as it is to bring it up, London 2012 nailed it in oh so many ways, not least with Stella McCartney's football kit (well, the shirt - the shorts and socks were stripelessly lame).  Both the men's and women's Team GBs went out of their competitions with a whimper after encouraging starts but their shirts, in keeping with the stylish adidas outfits of the other athletes, were a breath of fresh air that will be looked back on with fondness.  If only McCartney had been tasked with designing the England kit.

Umbro

And so it's that foreboding time again, when we knock years off our life expectancy traipsing around shops and jumping from website to website desperately attempting to locate gifts for our nearest and dearest that will satisfy them, avoid us losing face whilst also maintaining whatever degree of solvency we hold in this current financial gloom.

I realise not everyone celebrates Christmas, and not everyone will be buying gifts during this period, but I will, and this is my blog, so please indulge me.  Besides, for those who are in a similar position to me, it's tricky, and I'm here to help...

Now, an ideal Christmas present, you'd think, from a football design point of view, would be a football shirt.  Sadly, this isn't necessarily the case.  The marketing geniuses that run football clubs' merchandising wings have an unhelpful knack of allowing several sizes of most popular new shirts to go out of stock by mid-September.  So whilst I'm sure I'll compile my kits of the 2012-13 season at some point, that won't really help us as you can't get hold of them.

Instead I'll list some items, which should still be available, but mark this season as a point of interest rather than simply look pretty.  They are the, breaking from tradition...

Goalkeepers - a different breed.  This goes for custodians and their wont of individuality in the attire they take to the field.  We all will reference Jorge Campos' day-glo oversized kits of the mid-nineties and Fabien Barthez, the wannabe outfielder, bringing short-sleeved goalkeeper shirts to the Premier League - despite Peter Schmeichel having already eschewed forearm coverage for the same club previously - but the evolution has taken several twists and turns over the last few years.

If we travel back half a century, goalkeeper shirts were generally functional and seldom evoked the personality of the footballer inside.  The colour distinguished the player from his outfield teammates, like the blue blood rather than the subjects' red running through the veins of the British royal family, in order to indicate that this person lived by a different set of rules.  Shorts and socks could match the rest of the team, as below the waist a goalkeeper was akin to anyone else, but when the sleeves came into play these needed to be easily noticeable as legally handling in the box.

Lev Yashin wore a black shirt, for the USSR, which became iconic through the wearer's exploits, and Peter Shilton added a stitched number 1 to his green shirt - inspiring Brian Clough's legendary green jumper as he was the "one number 1 around here" - at a time when any further identification had generally been deemed unnecessary.  Aside from this there was a landscape of green - and yellow internationally - with few exceptions.

Contrast this with the spectacular - often horrendous - designs of the nineties.  The no-holds-barred assaults on the eyes of opposing strikers gave us some of the most gaudy designs we've ever seen on a football pitch.  Schmeichel modelled plenty of shocking styles with great success for Manchester United and Denmark.

Over recent weeks football kit manufacturers - particularly Warrior and Under Armour - have been taking flak over their choice of their clubs' change kit colours.  If we're honest, grumbles are consistently heard whenever new kits are released, a major objection being that the three kits over a season do not offer enough protection against the dreaded "clash", but the two new-kids-on-the-block American companies have taken this oversight to a new level.

There are two games which have people up in arms, one already played and one on the distant horizon: Hearts v Liverpool in the Europa League play-off round on 23rd August and West Brom against Tottenham on 2nd February next year.

In Scotland, Heart of Midlothian were forced to wear all white in a home game - changing to Away shirt and socks - as Liverpool's choice of all black Away kit was deemed to too similar to the dark-tinted maroon of the Jambos.  Red would have equally been unacceptable and Liverpool's "nightshade" and white Third would have both given purplish-on-purplish action and dropped us in "overall clash" territory.  So the home team changed.  It's not right, it's not proper but it happened.  The world moved on.

Come February, Tottenham Hotspur will visit The Hawthorns and, as things stand, we don't know what kits the sides will turn out in.  The argument holds that no Spurs kit will be acceptable, with the all white Home clashing with the navy-and-white-stripes/white/white West Brom kit, navy Away clashing with the navy stripes - and, crucially, West Brom's navy sleeves - and the black and grey halved Third being a bit too "dark, light, dark, light" when employed against a similar equivalent - somewhat proven against Reading.  The solution, overall clash fans, may be for West Brom to wear navy shorts and socks and Spurs to wear their Home kit.  We know the Baggies don't need much of a push to break out the change items and they're arguably just as recognisible in the shirt's darker accessories as they are in predominantly white.  It won't be right, of course, not proper, but it might happen.  The world will move on.

One of the great ruminations of football kit design is the concept of multi-purpose shorts and socks.  That is to say, shorts and socks that suit, generally speaking are designed to suit, at least two of the outfield shirts in any team's season wardrobe.

There is a call for flexibility in this area due to greater emphasis than ever before being put on the avoidance of the "overall clash".  The implication seems to be that when two teams face-off they should not appear, even in the blink of an eye, to be similar in the way they are turned out.  This dictates that, occasionally, the intended and marketed combination of shirt, shorts and socks is inadequate.

Interchangeability is a concept, along with its contrary nemeses, which splits opinion.  In one corner, the traditionalist: logical, resourceful and considerate; seeing the benefit and good sense of giving each item most use and most function, thinking of the consumer buying not a pair of Home shorts but a pair of Home/Away, maybe even Home/Away/Third shorts - Utility shorts, if you will.

In the opposite corner stands the unrelenting and uncompromising sportswear designer.  He sees each kit as a work of art, a creation which shouldn't be shackled by any element needing to equally complement a design on another drawing board.  The marketeer agrees with the designer.  More items on sale and/or less flexibility of combinations means more money passing through tills - or so goes his logic.

As covered in Denis Hurley's seminal work, Mix and Mismatch, there are countless examples of missed opportunities for those wishing for interchangeability.  Umbro and England are serial culprits, admittedly not releasing Home and Away kits at the same time but giving each "change" shorts when a little foresight would have rendered the opposite kit's shorts acceptable.  The recent schizophrenic and multi-faceted Home and Goalkeeper kit launch - each featuring red shorts and socks of identical style but slightly differing shades - was an end of level boss in the Quest for Interchangeability video game.

Ditto Brazil releasing two pairs of blue shorts with their new kits - Home with a white stripe, Away with a yellow one.  Perversely, they are actually interchangeable, as when required to wear their blue Away socks with the Home shirt (brownie points...) the side planned to switch to the Away shorts for aesthetic purposes (...stripped).  Why, when this exact scenario unfolded in the thrilling loss to Argentina, they still turned out in their Home shorts is a question for their kitman.

Denmark demonstrated no such twisted accession in a pre-Euro 2012 friendly against Russia, wearing white change Away shorts, rather than the Home shorts of an identical template and colour palette.  In the tournament, however, they instead did wear their Home shorts with their Away shirt and vice versa as, I wager, Uefa and Fifa take a dim view of any team bringing more than one pair of shorts in each colour - further outlined by Germany wearing their Home shorts in their 2010 World Cup demolition of Argentina.

And this is what the interchangeability movement aims to stamp out.  Denis Hurley erroneously titles his article Mix and Mismatch whilst calling for continuity and conformity.  Is it necessary when we can crowbar interchangeability?  The mismatch is what gives a look some bite.  Liverpool in red shorts and socks with grey shirt against Arsenal looks wrong but becomes a guilty pleasure.  Uniformity may please us on some level but eventually washes over us.  Kit uniformity is the opium of the people, whereas mismatching gives us the rhubarb in the crumble or the dill pickle in the cheeseburger.  Mismatching is the extra-marital affair which revives a dull union.

Of course, comprehensive mixing and matching would also spell the end of one of the football kit world's great rarities, the change item.  Often superfluous and seldom, never or needlessly deployed - as in the case of Manchester United eschewing their gingham Away shorts to wear black Home change versions -  it remains a curiosity that excites.  I own a pair pink-slash-orange Barcelona shorts and without change items I would not, though to debut a kit with change shorts rather than those readily available to fans, as Olympique de Marseille did at the end of last season, is an insult.  I somehow doubt they were merely, in fact, the standard Third shorts turned inside out.

It's also worth considering the designers' argument.  Sometimes two items in the same main colour are justified.  Take a popular FC United of Manchester kit recently uploaded to the DF gallery.  The two sets of socks are perfect complements to their respective shirts and (apparently interchangeable) shorts.  Still the designer realises his faux-pas and comments that he is "Now aware of two different black socks. So would probably do the Home kit with Red socks."  No need.  This is where change socks can come in.

All the same, let's indulge the Holy Grail.  Denis Hurley makes a convincing case and illustrates his point well, even managing to limit the shorts and socks to two pairs across three kits.  Italy had interchangeable Home and Away shorts and socks in Euro 2012 and Hibernian in 2009-10 - a bizarre season of Hibs kits which is sure to be revisited - elected to release only one pair of shorts amongst Home and Away outfits, perhaps as a reaction to neither Celtic nor Rangers ever needing to change shorts when playing each other.  This season Marseille (them again) had the good intention of wearing blue socks with their usually all white Home kit and white socks with their blue Away though what many would describe as common sense is gradually prevailing and, ahem, the old switcheroo is being pulled.  Staying in France, oh how I would love to see the French national team turn out in Home shirt, Away shorts and red goalkeeper socks - a de facto product of interchangeability as it would be a sin to describe the traditional look as "mismatching".

So interchangeability can work, but Denis neglects two vital points.  Firstly, in the cases of Arsenal, Liverpool, Real Madrid and others there is a point-blank refusal to wear any other shorts than the Home versions with their Home shirt.  So any production of Away and Third shorts compatible with Home shirts would be a waste.

The other issue is more general, if somewhat theoretical.  If we take interchangeable kit sets as being a season-by-season phenomenon, we have to consider that for many, including myself, the definitive approach is the release of new Home and Away kits each season and the carrying over of the previous season's Away kit as a Third kit - often with a new sponsor or even a new crest.

So we have another factor: cross template interchangeability.  A tricky procedure just got a whole lot trickier and one that for any bog-standard mathematician would be a bridge too far.  I, however, recently disproved the logic of The Big Bang Theory('s Sheldon), so it'll be a doddle.

Football kits often progress in stages, such as our good friends Marseille's Home shirts from 2004-2006 (wait for it...) and interchangeability could follow a similar model.  New Home and Away kits would unveil new template features but still retain some of those included in the previous season's Away kit and so the pattern repeats.  It's a stretch, and some might argue there's some mismatching involved, but DF member Steevo has very kindly fried his brain illustrating the process below, showing Home, Away and Third kits over three seasons from bottom to top, which provides 27 possible combinations every year and means every Away item has the potential to be utilised in 17 different outfits over a biennial period:

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Whilst I make no apology for being opinionated, it occasionally becomes necessary for me to qualify my remarks.  For example, I recently railed against the use of sublimation in football shirt manufacture, only to have it pointed out to me that major sportswear manufacturers utilise the technique to create stripes, hoops, sashes and other integral patterns.  I was, of course, aware of this and merely hadn't been explicit enough in outlining that I was referring to sublimation's use when adding finer details such as single, double or triple striping on sleeves, manufacturers' logos, crests and sponsors.

Ah, sponsors.  Even more recently I wrote a piece taking aim at football clubs and associations - FAI, this means you - which allow shirt sponsorship to impact negatively on a design or reputation.  What I didn't make quite clear enough, it seems, is that I actually like football shirt sponsorship.

In fact, the right sponsor can make a football shirt.  Cork City/QPR with Guinness, St Pauli with Astra, Scarborough with Black Death Vodka (really!).  In my last article I referred to Liverpool's association with Carlsberg - as opposed to Standard Chartered - as being one which was celebrated by the fans, but I'm more of a Candy man (ha) myself, with a fondness for Crown Paints and, naturally, Hitachi.  In fact, befitting someone born in Kettering - home of the first British club to wear a shirt sponsor - I am keen to embrace brand logos appearing on shirts, if it's the right brand and the right logo, and the bigger the better.

CR Smith was a particular favourite with Celtic - though the larger player style rather than the downsized version used on the replicas.  And, whilst I understand the desire to get one's hands on a rarity, Uefa's limiting of the size of shirt sponsors is generally to the shirts' cost, even considering Borussia Dortmund's dispensing of the Die Continental wording on their run to Champions League glory in 1997, and creating a perpetually out of reach version of their 97-98 shirt in the final.

"Ruined by the sponsor(s)" is an oft-repeated refrain on football shirt websites, particularly FootballShirtCulture.com, generally expressing disappointment at a warmly-received design carrying an organisation's logo which is to its detriment.

Football clubs need to make money.  More than ever before, any potential injection of funds into a team's progress has to be considered, even with significant drawbacks.  Chelsea took money from a Russian oligarch with a shady past in order to stop going out of business (and he won them the European Cup), Llansantffraid FC became Total Network Solutions for a time and Manchester United, through maximising fund-raising efforts by floating on the stock exchange, left themselves open to being taken over by debt-laden owners.

For most clubs, however, putting the name of a business on the front of the shirt is the major compromise of ideals.  The most crudely symbolic in recent times are those of short-term loan companies such as Wonga.com on the Hearts and Blackpool shirts and the-pawn-broker-it's-ok-to-like Cash Converters on Hull City's torsos.  These are indicative of recession-hit Britain and, like many others, are included on playing and replica wear much to the chagrin of supporters.

Sponsors' logos are not always disliked; Carlsberg became popular with Liverpool fans, and I've always greeted larger profiled designs on French kits - not least Montpellier carrying 'Sud de France' to represent in stopping PSG winning the French title whilst l'OM fiddled - but what to do for the many logos which don't stir the heart so expertly?

di·vest   [dih-vest, dahy-] 
verb (used with object)
Commerce .
a. to sell off: to divest holdings.
b.to rid of through sale: The corporation divested itself of its subsidiaries.

Me neither.  Put simply, Nike are going to try to sell Umbro as they're losing money.

Now, I'm about to argue pretty convincingly that I saw this coming, quoting myself seemingly spotting warning signs and melodramatically prophecising.

Don't believe a word of it.  It came as as much as a shock to me as it did anyone.  What I actually predicted, wrongly, was that Nike (the brand) would take the England contract from Umbro - something that the FA may or may not have vetoed - and whilst I was somewhat vindicated by Manchester City going down that route, along with some Brazilian sides, and did question "whether or not Nike have had enough of allowing Umbro to continue..." it was solely in reference to the Three Lions.

My main worry was not business-related.  My fear that Umbro had "jumped the shark" was from looking at the company from a design standpoint, particularly in light of the recent England Home kit release, which disappointed.