Design Football Memebrs Blog

So here we find ourselves in 2009. Happy New Year. I hope everyone got what they wanted for Christmas; I certainly did. Liverpool top of the league, Chelsea dropping points, Celtic winning at Ibrox (with the bonus of that allegedly adulterous Rangers-supporting swine Gordon Ramsay no doubt being banished to his shed to witness it) and finally my Christmas wouldn't have been complete without receiving an example of football design brilliance.

My (bespoke?) Liverpool/Marseille scarf went straight from the wrapping to my neck and that's where it stayed as I eschewed other presents. "Indoors" and what? I now need Celtic/Liverpool and Marseille/Celtic versions and three weeks' worth of 09/10 Marceltipool wintertime sideline elegance will be catered for.

But Christmas is also a time of turkeys. And not just the fat, stuffed variety that we consume. Every December 25th, kids and adults alike unwrap the current shirt of their favourite football team, regardless of whether it's a hit or a miss. There may only be five more months of guaranteed sycronicity with what the players are wearing but the football shirt/kit is a seasoned pro when it comes to the under-tree area. This season's aforementioned turkey is, in my mind, Manchester City's bright orange change number and surprisingly, despite the convenience of the poultry link, it's come from Le Coq Sportif.

Le Coq Sportif has a distinguished history of sports, fashion and particularly football design. Success on the field has followed the brand from their comparitively early years when they manufactured the kit of the first French title-winning Olympique de Marseille team through to their supplying to Tottenham Hotspur - including FA Cup victories - and the Argentinian (x2) and Italian World Cup winning teams of 1978 through to 1986. They could claim to have been world champions for 12 consecutive years as a result.

So Millwall have got a new shirt. And it's pretty good. Little wonder. It's orange.

Some of the best shirts have been orange (or "tangerine". It's the last time you'll see me call a shirt that) and it just makes a mockery of Graham Taylor's dislike of the colour. "Do I not like orange". Do I not like orange? Yes. Er, no. Yes I do like orange shirts.

Millwall have gone with the colour of kings, pseudo-literally speaking. The Dutch royal family is known as the House of Orange-Nassau and, despite what Graham thinks, Holland have had some of the best orange shirts over the years. Their 70s number was one of the first to feature adidas's three stripes down the sleeve. That is until Johan Cruyff got his hands on his and tore a stripe off in an apparent show of support of his sponsor Puma (Adi/Rudi Dassler etc). Unwittingly he created a two-striped classic and Puma have recently shown their appreciation in shirts such as this season's Spurs away.

In 1988 the victorious Dutch team of Rijkaard, Gullit & van Basten won the Euro with one of that period's most iconic kits and the patterned design has recently featured (inverted) in adidas's Originals range, despite the Dutch now having an equally superb Nike-manufactured kit. From the flag detail on the neck (echoing Ruud Gullit's horizontal tricolour captain's armband) to the beautiful socks in nassau blue (how many colours does that royal family want?!) Nike have created a masterpiece. Even the bizarre shirt numbers add to the effect.

The Mirror recently unveiled that David Beckham will wear the number 75 shirt at Milan.  If this is true then it's no great surprise (though I actually called 45 to continue the Michael Jordan theme) as Beckham's favoured numbers 7 and 23 are taken by Pato and Ambrosini respectively and DB7/23/75 was born in 1975.  In fact, and here's a surprise, it's a marketing masterstroke.

Players have been using more imaginative or high numbers for several years now.  Two great examples were Ivan Zamorano's inventive use of a plus sign to, in his own mind, continue wearing number 9 upon Ronaldo's arrival at Inter and Bixente Lizarazu's apparently erotic numbering on rejoining Bayern Munich.  The latter turned out to be an early example of the year of birth method and that's the current fashion at Milan (Google "Milan Fashion" and this'll no doubt prove me right).  

Shevchenko, Ronaldinho and Flamini have all recently been brought in and all wear their year of birth on their backs.  As a result, lots of fans also wear their (Shevchenko, Ronaldinho and Flamini's) year of birth so Beckham fits perfectly into this. Throw in the ever-secretive Sporting ID's club-specific fonts and numbering style and you have a late entry on a million Christmas lists.  Threefold.

The difference between the potential for shirt sales "on the back" of this deal compared with that of other deals is that this is temporary.  When a player moves the temptation may be to wait to see how the move works out.  No one wants a DIOUF 9 Liverpool shirt (I lie.  I had one on sale on jfh29er and it went.  Eventually) or a Balaban 19 Villa one but, while Beckham's not really expected to set the San Siro alight, crucially, he'd also have to go some to really blot his copybook in two months.  Beckham, his team, Milan and his bootmaker/sponsor adidas (it's not just convenient that it's Milan and not Inter or Juve) have engineered this move because people can buy into a piece of history.  You can complete your set with a Beckham 75 Milan shirt and, guess what, it never goes out of date because there'll only ever be one style that Beckham wore.

By Jay

This week, English Premier League team West Ham United are due to announce that they will soon be wearing a new sponsor on their shirts. 

The sponsor, SBOBET, is a gambling company currently under investigation following match-fixing allegations. So pretty far removed from the Bobby Moore Fund, which West Ham's fans campaigned to be featured on the shirts.

From an aesthetic point of view, let's be honest about this, it's gonna be boring. Yet another soulless graphic advertising an organisation that (despite the disproportionately high amount of unethically opportunistic bookies in Newham) means precisely nothing to the supporters, plastered on shirts on the pitch and in the stands. The Bobby Moore Fund logo is not only what the fans wanted but is also a worthy cause and just looks better.