Since I started writing this blog some four years ago a common theme has been recurring.  That is 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.

Well now I'm done.  We've got the input, we've had our say, the manufacturers and clubs have moved on the information we've given them and we've been greatly rewarded.  Now it's time to allow designers to design.

This about-face is is purely due to the kits we're seeing now being, on average, by far the superior of those of any period in the past.  Seriously.  I used to comment on the irony of being such a football shirt obsessive when I only really liked about 10-15% of the new releases I saw when I visited Football Shirt Culture.  Now that percentage is closer to 40; maybe even half the new shirts actually impress me.

We have one company to thank for this: Umbro.  They took a look at kit design when they were bought out by Nike - probably taking advantage of the enhanced resources - and decided it needed stripping back and reassembling.  They embraced social media, not simply as a way of getting their message across but also inviting (design) fans to give opinions on past and future kits.  They checked what people were saying on FSC and were happy to meet with the commentators.  The result was the 2009-10 England Home kit and their rapidly improving Tailored By range.

Dave Woods paused for effect immediately after delivering the dramatic news. With Channel 5 having hit the jackpot with their serendipitous adoption of Athletic Bilbao's Uefa Cup campaign - and reclaiming the formerly mocking "Thursday Nights on Channel 5" chant with all stigma banished - the commentator now had the opportunity to consolidate this success with a surefire winner. News had come through that Atletico Madrid were through to the Final and should Bilbao get past Sporting Lisbon to meet them then they would be nominally the away team and, wait for it, be required to wear their green away shirt.

When a football shirt has even got the commentators onboard you can say with some confidence that the design's hit the spot. In the case of Athletic Bilbao, the shirt benefits from being coupled with a successful side playing football regarded in a similar bracket to Barcelona and Swansea City and with a ruthless attacking flair akin to that displayed by Tottenham Hotspur in the first half of the season.

So the connotations of the shirt are sound, what about the aesthetics?  When the kit was first released the admiration was resounding and as time has gone on it has grown on even those who were unmoved.  If you look for a purpose in a shirt's makeup then the lifting of the Basque Country's Ikurrin's (flag) colours, a local company's classy logo as sponsor and the standard inclusion of the local coucil's oak leaf logo on the sleeve should suffice; its obvious resemblance to the Basque national team's shirt (combined with the club's status as a national team by proxy) was always going to catch the eye as a handy bonus.  Throw in a touch of fraternité with Irish/Celtic fans sympathetic to the seperatist region's cause - and always on the lookout for new and exciting ways to contribute to their own seas of green - and popularity is almost guaranteed.

But there is one key element included that has translated across (and in spite of?) teams, colours and connotations and been the standout design feature of the 2011-12 season.  The chest bar/stripe has appeared on some of the best releases of the season and its effect is demonstrated perfectly on the Bilbao shirt, where its continuation onto the sleeves makes for an instantly recognisible kit and the perfect interpretation of a club's most treasured flag.  The same approach (for that read "template") was used on the Rangers Away shirt and, although the Union Jack is not as obvious, the block colours are equally striking.

The feature also tasted victory on Wednesday night when, adorning the white kits of Chelsea in their formidable defeat of Barcelona, it may have shoehorned its way into the London club's folklore - not least through being carried by Fernando Torres when he executed and celebrated one of his few goals for the side.  This beautiful Third shirt has been criminally underused this season - which is especially confusing when we consider that their Away kit is black and Birmingham City binned their own similarly coloured second strip because it failed to provide an adequately non-clashing alternative when playing against teams in darker shades of blue.

So the feature could almost be regarded as synonymous with European competition success and its appeal spreads far and wide.  If we go back to Euro 2008, Germany wore a back chest bar with gold and red trim which included their player numbers in white - in contrast to the numbers on the back of the shirt in black - and this was one of the shirts of that tournament.  Go back even further and we come across thinner stripes horizontally on France shirts in the Eighties and one of the most iconic England shirt designs made so by a coloured bar across the chest/shoulders.

There are variations - Spurs' popular Puma shirt of 2010-11 featured a shoulder/chest bar at an angle - but as a general component it usually seems to work however it is applied.  Brazil's "loading bar" shirts didn't last long and may have pushed the concept to its limit in demonstrating a lack of unity between the bar and the rest of the design but it could well be the exception that proves the rule.

Personally, I think the feature has made 2012 its own, which is why I chose kits including a chest stripes to represent DF on the League of Blogs Wallchart.  With the possibility of the aspect contributing to the winning of both European club trophies this season, Poland - who with the Ukraine host this summer's European Championships - or Italy, via their away kits, could even give it a hattrick.
 

The geniuses at Nike have done it again. If you are not aware, they were responsible for the recent debacle of releasing a pair of trainers for St Patrick's Day, which were described in the clumsiest of Guinness-referencing adjectives, and named, I kid you not, after the moniker given to the horrendously vicious British paramilitary unit which tortured and murdered Irish people in the early 1920s, the Black and Tans.

The only explanation for this PR disaster must be that a little word association popped into the mind of a marketeer and a quick Google of "Ireland black tans" gave enough - unchecked - results to apparently vindicate the now full-steam-ahead development of this project. Despite the obvious offence caused, the notion of this campaign being discussed in passing at an office water cooler in Portland, Oregon, leading any employee with a modicum of knowledge of Irish history to feel the blood drain from their face, offers a comical subtext to the farce.

And, as I say, they've done it again. This time the consequences are far less offensive and far less perversely misguided but they do again concern a lax grasp of details relating to history, in this case that of Liverpool Football Club.

LeBron James, the American basketball player, has had a pair of signature shoes made in his honour and these are decorated with graphics relating to Liverpool's history - via Nike's peculiar twisting of the facts.

I like Mr James. It's fun to see his enthusiasm for his business concern in the North West of England - he is a partner of Liverpool's owners Fenway Sports Group - and his carrying of non-adidas-branded club shop tat that would otherwise go unsold but for his contractual eschewing of Nike's rivals. The smile is wiped from our faces, however, when we see Nike produce trainers in his name, in a questionable colourway, which carry depictions of 18 Premier League trophies - denoting the club's English league titles, all won before the inception of the Premier League - and a heel detail "inspired by" the Liver Bird but looking more like a griffin defecating.

Despite the Liver Bird not being trademarked it would obviously be beyond audacious - and bound to provoke legal action nonetheless - if Nike had used an intrinsic part of the Liverpool crest on a pair of shoes which references the club, but for me this is easily resolved. Just don't make the trainers. And had Nike run the designs past fans of the club then they would never have been put into development.

Nike have had a welcome impact on football design and are now, with a little help from their subsidiary Umbro, receiving regular plaudits for their drawing board approach and for their ethics. In fairness, the indiscretions outlined - and the latter is not the first involving LeBron James - are unrelated to the Nike Football section of the company, which has again boosted its own reputation with its Euro 2012 releases and the new Celtic kit, but a brand is a brand and when you begin to risk the sales of Ireland shirts (Umbro) and, for similar reasons, the aforementioned Celtic shirts, not to mention your entire sportswear range in Ireland and in the sportswear-loving East End of Glasgow and Merseyside, it may be time to put a little more R into your R&D.
 

As I have mentioned before, somewhat unconvincingly, the "football" in "football design" doesn't have to refer to association football.  There are several other codes which fall under that umbrella term.

I've already covered rugby and there is of course plenty to write about in Australian Rules football and American Football, but this time I'll focus on the Gaelic Athletic Association's version of the sport and its virtually synonymous primary kit manufacturer, O'Neills.

O'Neills Sportswear was established in 1918 and has produced playing wear for Ireland's top teams - whatever the pursuit - ever since.  In addition, O'Neills has been the supplier of choice for much of the world's Gaelic sport teams - and there are plenty - and currently even provides FC United of Manchester with their strip.

In fact, O'Neills has hit the kit design headlines recently due to a shirt made for a Gaelic football (and hurling) club based in London - St Mary's University College.  It's a beautiful piece of work, and destined to become a cult classic due to being sponsored by Buckfast - a tonic wine particularly beloved by the Scots and Irish, but it does have two flaws.

The first issue I take with the shirt is a general concern regarding the sleeves.  O'Neill's has constantly been the subject of rumour surrounding its use of the three stripes on its items, but these - or certainly two of the three - are missing from the St Mary's shirt.  Aesthetically it matters little - it arguably would be an unnecessary addition, but it is an omission brought by limitation rather than choice.

The fantastic GAA kit blog Pride In The Jersey by Denis Hurley puts this far better than I ever could, but the omission is as a result of court proceedings whereby the German sportswear giant adidas attempted to block O'Neills from using the three stripes.  The Irish company prevailed in their own land, meaning anything designed to be worn and sold on the island of Ireland could carry the distinctive markings, but for everything sent overseas at least one stripe should be removed - even to the extent of O'Neills producing foreign versions of their domestic range, which inevitably leads to many people ordering the original version and having it delivered to an Irish address and then asking a kind soul to foward it on.

In this world of common markets, intercontinental trade and the internet, it seems staggering that adidas do not go further and try to get a European decision to overrule the Irish courts, especially with O'Neills apparently being particularly brazen in some of their adidas-lite designs over the years.

The truth may be more complicated.  adidas has a significant history in Ireland - not least through the A-list designs it bestowed upon Cork City via the nearby factory (available for your perusal thanks to, again, Denis Hurley) and it wouldn't surprise me if there was regular liaison between adidas and O'Neills' marketing and design teams and perhaps even licensing of outdated templates with slight variations.

Something I touched on recently in The Second Best Titled Blog Article Ever™ (I'm, naturally, also responsible for the best) that deserves expanding on is the yin to the rise of the baselayer's glorious yang - the demise of long-sleeved football shirts.

As wrapped up as I've been in celebrating the - as yet not entirely tapped - possibilities of undergarments, I've perhaps negected to pay true tribute to the mainstay of football through the ages, which is now seriously under threat.

The long-sleeved shirt was, in what we'll call 'my day', the standard form of football shirt in every level below professional.  Coupled with a size label with at least one X, it meant cuffs to grip onto on a wet Sunday morning and, due to its roomy shielding of puny forearms, one less complex to deal with on the pitch.  As well as the only option in early nineties l'Olympique de Marseille shirts, it also provided the most sought after replica for Liverpool and Celtic - a thirst that was rarely quenched.

Things have changed.  Continental (please forgive the retro phraseology) long-sleeved shirts are as tricky to locate as their UK cousins and teamwear is now regularly available and acquired in short-sleeved variations.  In the Premier League, where once players would be the envy of the fan by having options when it came to sleeve length, it now appears that less is more (it's what one does with it that counts) and relative dinosaurs such as the finally declining David Beckham represent the luddites wearing their hearts below the elbow.

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At last, Team GB has its kit for the 2012 Olympic Games.  And, sure enough, it's controversial.

To many the launch of the football kit - which I'll focus on for the sake of brevity - comes as a surprise.  Not to me, not to Football Shirt Culture regulars and I'd guess not to many of the modest number that read this blog, but plenty assumed that the kit released last year, when the storm over the other 'Home' nations reluctance to release players for the tournament was at its peak, was the playing wear for the Games.  It was, in fact, absolutely shameless opportunism from various marketing entities - particularly demonstrated by the prococative use of Welshman Gareth Bale in publicity shots - but sadly plenty fell for it and didn't realise that its labelling of "Supporters Kit" meant that it would never feature on the pitch.  Part of me died inside every time I overheard someone in the street exclaim something along the lines of "I'm gonna get that Team GB kit!  It's well nice!"

It wasn't the Team GB kit, and it wasn't well nice.

It was cheap, tacky and dated.  Three things that could never be levelled at Stella McCartney's wonderful creation for adidas.  I speak as someone who has designed a relatively well-received Team GB shirt which featured on the talkSPORT website, but I bow down to Ms McCartney's disregard of templates, conformity and any clamour for a more literal representation of the Union Jack.

Apologies to anyone who is offended by my timekeeping.  The navy England away shirt has been out for nearly a year and only now am I going to review it.  I do have excuses but they're wafer-thin so I'll get on with the business in hand.

As late as it is, it may actually be an ideal time to read about the pros and cons of the current England away shirt.  There's a tournament coming - generally the point at which there is a spike in shirt sales - and England, despite my claims that they would wear Nike and/or a red away at Euro 2012, will be packing this model for their journey to Eastern Europe.  So as I have a review example, probably the last one I'll receive, let's make the most of it.

First a little background.  The shirt was launched by way of British boxer David Haye carrying it on his back prior to being completely outclassed by Wladimir Klitschko in his world title unification bout.  Not an auspicious start from the marketing perspective and it got worse still when Haye blamed his defeat on a broken toe.  After the lauded Tom Meighan-assisted unveiling of the previous away shirt there was method in the madness, but it backfired spectacularly.

The Kasabian stunt was also more accurately reprised with the assistance of dance music act Chase & Status (me neither) but the damage was done.  The England shirt would have to do its talking on the pitch.

England have a new kit. For the fifth time in three years the Three Lions are mounted on a brand, spanking new outfield design.

And this time they're red.

The totally unauthorised leak/bizarre left-field Umbro-managed launch of the home and "goalkeeper" kit (more of which later) by supposed twitter legend Joey Barton (and subsequent drip-feeding on the manufacturer's facebook page) shows the crest, as intricate as the last two incarnations, now dispenses with the spectrum of tradition and instead goes with a single coloured tonal approach. We've seen the limited edition tonal range of previous releases but this is a first - in the modern era at least - for the playing wear.

Over the last few days we've become aware of what the FC Barcelona shirts for 2012-13 will look like.  Despite the Spanish media having form in getting this oh so wrong it seems this time they've nailed it.

The designs for the new Barça kits will again prove controversial, with a home shirt looking like a PSG number minus that nauseating white and through short-sighted eyes, and an orange away (they never go without that for more than a year) gradually lightening lower down.  But, let's face it, they're called the Blaugrana but that doesn't mean they have to wear stripes. Halves and diagonal halves (ish) have been seen over recent years - nodding to early kits - and coupled with their random rotating of blue and red shorts they're almost Bayern Munich-like in their approach to home colours.

A greater controversy is surely the adoption of not one but two sponsors as of this season.  From a side which never wanted to distract attention from their famous colours whatsoever, they became the first side in the Champions League to carry an extra name on the lower back of their shirts - swiftly followed by the opportunistic Chelsea.  Yes, Unicef is a charitable organisation - as is, we're told, The Qatar Foundation, which now holds pride of place on the front - but both made it onto the shirt by way of commercial decision by the club, and a decision that has brought in both millions of euros and oodles of positive PR.

So yes, the club now puts sponsors on the shirt.  This is partly to finally bite the bullet and realise if they want to purchase Europe's best talent they will need to start offering real money, but generally speaking it'a just Barça catching up with a trend they should really be at the forefront of.  Still the question is begged, if the club is now so commercially savvy, why they make errors such as accompanying the section of their website that sells last season's away kit with images of Gerard Pique and Leo Messi wearing the mint green shirt in its 2011-12 third kit form with Qatar Foundation sponsor (not on sale) along with the player issue green change shorts (again, not on sale).