Clothes maketh the man - football shirts

Iconic images. We always have those ingrained somewhere in our heads - when we think of certain players, we look back to the grainy black and white photos, the fuzzy TV screens, or the incomplete Panini Mexico 86 sticker books.

Terry Butcher is immortalised in a blood stained England shirt from 1989. Pele in the simple yellow Brazil shirt of 1970. The memories of Croatia v Denmark at Hillsborough in 1996, a team of mysterious strangers (mostly) donned in tablecloths swiped from a local Italian restaurant.

A huge market exists for the replicas of such jerseys. eBay, websites and collectors make a killing helping big kids lust after the shirts we remember. Some of these shirts get reproduced, perhaps as a money-making lust from the manufacturers. We see the football stadia full of men squeezing into the shirts of young boys. But is it ever the same?

 

Awesome player, but is the shirt now worth more?

The shirts are polyester firestarters, itchy as hell, not the supposedly eco-friendly pieces of today, which claim to be made of recycled bottles, absorb sweat and are supposed to look good with jeans. Classic designs, with enormous collars, simple stripes and peeling sponsor logos.

But will any of today's shirts be classics? And indeed how long can we wait before a shirt is a true antique? Sport shops sell current England shirts for less than a plain white t-shirt, ensuring that they are seen all over, a triumph for now, but I doubt they'll be remembered.

We all have our memories. Mine are of Michael Thomas in 1989, the classic Adidas yellow shirt, and I queued for hours to have him sign my replica at Islington Woolworths, only for him to pass comment that it had a large 2 on the back, the number of Lee Dixon, saying "I hope that was the score and not for Dicko".

Up for grabs now...

Maybe after the research for this blog, we can drum up a market for this shirt, and hopefully the video below will explain why!

Brazil v Zaire, 1974 World Cup

Brilliant. No amount of awful clip shows will take this away from me.

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