The New Avatar of the Football Shirt

Football is undoubtedly one of the most famous and most celebrated team game the world over, with a maximum number of countries participating in it. A football shirt is a part of the official kit of the football club, and is attractively designed in colorful prints and exciting designs.

Originally the football shirt was quite ordinary, buy with the onset of professionalism it has been made to guarantee the maximum amount of satisfaction to the players. The modern day football players wear shirts made of polyester mesh with the rather special quality that they do not trap the body heat and the sweat of the players in the same manner as the shirts made of natural fibers do.

And now that many companies are sponsoring the more famous teams, the fronts of those football shirts house the logos of those sponsors, which results in a significant level of income for that sponsoring house. Some competitions like the famous Premier League require players to wear patches on their sleeves which depict the logo of the competition.

The number of the player is mostly printed on the shirt's back. Originally the players were given a number serially from 1 to 11 which corresponded to their playing position, but, in professional games, this numbering has generally been superseded by squad numbering. Numbers are allocated to each player in a squad. It has been noted that many players are superstitious and they prefer to have a particular number.

These numbers are said to be lucky numbers by the players. Argentina's Diego Maradona is one such example and his preferred number is 10. Similarly different players of different countries are shown to have certain affinity to these numbers.

The colors of the football shirts are strongly individual and hence at once recognizable as belonging to a particular team or a club. Generally these colors correspond with the national flag colors, but there are a few exceptions where the choice of the football shirt's colors is dictated by some other factor.

In 1975, the Leeds United club changed from their traditional blue and gold kit to an all white kit which could be sold to the crowd in the form of replica kits. This set a pattern for other clubs also to gain a huge amount of revenue by selling the replica kits of their club's official football shirt.

The design of these football shirts are driven today by the fact that the fans should look good when wearing them. Thus, these football shirts are acting as style statements with increasingly complex designs and color combinations incorporated on them. Recently, in 1996, the team Manchester United introduced a notorious grey kit visualizing that it would look good when worn along with jeans. But, later on it was abandoned because the manager Alex Ferguson said that the reason that their team lost was because the players could not see each other during the game.

Thus, we could say that with the increasing popularity of the game of football, the football shirt is undergoing a constant change and the clubs are gaining a high amount of revenue with their replica sales.