A kit of alright

Unrequited love can be a terrible thing. It can suck the life out of any man or woman, and turn us all in to irrational wrecks. There is nothing to be gained from pining for a love that will never be returned, but pining I am; for a genuine 1985/86 West Ham home shirt.

I realise any sympathy you might have had for me immediately vanished the moment I revealed the object of my affections to be a 25 year-old football shirt rather than my childhood sweetheart, but I assure you that this love is real and is not to be sniffed at. Having this shirt would complete me: it would make me insanely happy and in my opinion, a better person all round. Alas, it remains one of the few West Ham shirts missing from my collection.

As football shirts go, the 85/86 Adidas number that the Hammers wore is not exactly revolutionary. Yes it was a West Ham shirt without light blue sleeves, but it still bore the three sleeve-based stripes that have adorned almost all Adidas garments since the company was formed, and featured thin horizontal stripes like many other examples of the brand’s shirts at the time. In terms of fit, it had that classic 80s spray-on tight look that was perfected when teamed with shorts that were only a matter of centimetres longer than a pair of briefs.

Despite this, I still consider it a thing of beauty. Perhaps it’s because of the romance that images of the shirt conjure up: West Ham recording their highest ever top flight finish (third); a fresh faced Tony Cottee plundering goals at home and away; Mark Ward terrifying full-backs throughout the country; and Frank McAvennie scoring on an off the pitch despite the dual hindrance of a blonde perm and buck teeth. It was also the first football shirt I owned, and the beginning of a lifelong obsession.

Over the years, I (and indeed my parents) have spent more money than I care to divulge on feeding my football shirt habit. In the early days, I was non-discriminate; wearing the shirt of any club in the country so long as I liked the look of it: Sheffield United; Ipswich; Portsmouth; Aston Villa; even Chelsea for God’s sake - I wore them all and cared not if this appeared as some sort of betrayal to West Ham.

I even spent a whole day in London’s Soccerscene trying desperately to decide which kit to spend my birthday money on. I tried on pretty much all of the shop’s entire stock, and my parents and I had to break for lunch before returning and taking home an Umbro Manchester City shirt. Inside, I‘m pretty sure my West Ham-devoted father was raging.

Although these days I have the obsession under a degree of control and limit my football shirt purchases to West Ham, foreign clubs and international teams, I still have my head turned by the shirts of other teams now and again. But for me, the 80s remains the golden era of football shirt design. It was a time when the fans were fighting on the terraces and some of the football was just as ugly; but sportswear brands were just beginning to see the potential benefits of mass-produced football shirts, and many of the kits were true works of art.

Adidas were of course big players in the 80s kit movement with their West Ham, Ipswich and Manchester United shirts their finest examples; but others such as Le Coq Sportif were also architects of some beautiful creations. Take Everton’s 1983 kit as an example, which the French firm used brilliantly as inspiration for the Toffees kit last season. In their homeland, the brand reached even dizzier heights, with some sterling work on Paris St Germain’s shirts, whilst even I must admit that the Spurs shirts worn by Hoddle and company in the early 80s were pretty special too. Their designs are amongst the most iconic of the era, and the company were engaged in a keenly fought battle for supremacy with Adidas throughout the decade, whilst Nike continued to ignore the football market until the early 1990s.

Today of course, football shirts are big business. Premier League clubs now change their shirts every season as a matter of course, whilst many continue to launch “third” shirts when a distinctive away shirt will do the trick. England’s latest home shirt was designed by Peter Saville of Factory Records fame, and the use of squad numbers has given fans a way of expressing their support for a club’s cult heroes.

Whether you are a football shirt obsessive like me or find this fascination all a bit disturbing; every football fan will have a particular design they remember most fondly. It may be a shirt admired for its appearance, or simply for what it represents. And with my beloved 85/86 shirt, it’s definitely a case of both. Retro sportswear firms have tried to replicate the shirt, but although a good effort, it lacks branding and therefore authenticity. It continues to attempt to seduce me from the retro rack in Soccerscene though, but I am a man of principle and have promised myself never to be tempted by this polyester harlot.

Anyone with even a passing interest in football shirts should check out the following websites:

www.classicfootballshirts.co.uk  
www.footballshirtculture.com  
www.subsidesports.com