Besides being a way of showing support for your favourite football team, football shirts have found their way into casual wardrobes of both guys and girls. In this year’s World Cup, couples and even families were widely spotted wearing their favourite team’s strips. Personally, football shirts are more than declarations of love for my favourite teams. They serve a visual guide and glossary of historical moments in football clubs and associations’ histories.

I started collecting football shirts in 1996 for the simple reason of showing support for my chosen football club. This particular club was quite good in the 70s and 80s, but lost their way in the 90s and thereafter.
The appeal of club for me lay in their ‘pass and move’ mantra (which has sadly been forgotten for the past few seasons), the predatory skills of the Toxteth Terror and the fact that the city produced four lads who shook the world.

My very first football shirt was Liverpool Football Club’s 1996/98 home shirt and it was the first shirt produced by Reebok, after taking over the reins from Adidas.

From then on, I collected LFC’s home and away shirts from every season. As my collection grew, it served as my personal archive and visual reminder of the ups and downs of supporting the club.

There weren’t many glorious moments in the Reebok years but the rare good times were magical.

In a bid to increase its market share in basketball apparel, Adidas bought over Reebok in 2006. There were rumblings on the online forums that this move could result in LFC being sponsored by Adidas again. This rumour becoming reality sowed the seeds of my interest in collecting retro football shirts.

When Adidas took over, they produced shirts that were inspired by past shirts in LFC’s history. The key examples include:

The 2008/09 away shirt that was inspired by the grey change shirts of the late 80s and early 90s.

The 2006/07 third shirt that was shared design and colours of the 95/96 away shirt.

The 2008/10 home shirt that had strong visual similarities to the 95/96 home shirt.

Adidas’ retro take on LFC’s new strips got me hunting down the originals that they were based on and I was fortunate to collect second hand but relatively well-preserved shirts.

Adidas also reissued shirts from iconic seasons in the clubs’ history, namely the shirt they wore when they last won the English league title as well as the one where they won both the league and the Cup.

I then started collecting football shirts from other clubs with wonderful sporting histories and in some way affiliated with LFC.

Celtic Football Club was where Kenny Dalglish played before he was crowned King of the Kop. This shirt by Nike commemorates the 40th anniversary of Celtic’s European Cup win, when they became the first British club to lift the cup in 1967.

AC Milan met LFC in two European Cup finals in 2005 and 2007, where LFC won the first and AC Milan the second encounter, bringing their European Club tally to 7. This shirt is a reissue of the won worn by AC Milan in 1990/91 to commemorate their consecutive European Cup wins in 1988 & 1989.

Inter Milan triumphed over LFC in the 1965 semi final amidst controversial circumstances. This shirt commemorates Inter Milan’s 100th anniversary.

Real Madrid holds the record of most European Cup wins. Had they beat LFC in the 1981 Final, they would have had 10 to speak of today. This shirt captures how the team looked in the 80s.

At the moment, Barcelona is a club that always excites when they get their game on. The most notable encounter in recent memory of Barcelona V LFC was in 2006/07’s Champions league, where Liverpool won the encounter over two legs. This Barcelona shirt commemorates their 40 years at their Camp Nou stadium.

Having collected somewhat iconic football club shirts, my head was turned by national football association’s shirts. This was in the lead up to World Cup 2010, my justification for these acquisitions was they would serve nice mementos of the year my son was born. Call it a collector’s twisted mentality.

Brazil are five-time World Cup champions and their home colours of yellow with green trim are world renowned. They were eliminated by eventual finalists The Netherlands in the quarter-finals, but will take heart from the fact that the next World Cup will be held on home soil. This shirt does not deviate from Brazil’s usual uniform, with simple variations in the trim.

Italy entered the tournament as defending champions, having won the last edition, bringing their World Cup tally to four. They had a very poor showing and exited the tournament during the group stages. Their World Cup shirt was modelled after a centurion’s armour, hence the muscular details on the front of the shirt.

Three-time champions Germany steamrolled their way to the semi-finals where they suffered heartbreak at the hands of the eventual 2010 winners. The young team gave an impressive account of themselves and it will be interesting to see how they perform in Euro 2012. This edition of their shirt sports their usual white colour, and their flag colours of red, black and yellow (gold in this case) being scattered about in the trim and stripes.

Argentina’s qualification for the tournament was fraught with drama and this was not inexplicable, given the fact that their most iconic footballer was at the helm. Besides his 1986 winner’s medal and fantastic ability, Maradona is well known for his unusual temperament. When Argentina started the tournament, hopes of them adding to their two medal tally went up. Regrettably, they were soundly beaten in their quarter-final encounter with Germany. This edition of the shirt bears many similarities with their 1986 winners’ shirt, most notably in the placement and widths of the white and sky blue stripes.

France only triumph in the tournament was in 1998, but the team that competed in the 2010 edition was torn apart by in-fighting before they were knocked out in the group stage. This shirt shares similar aesthetics with their 98 winner’s shirt, with a variation of the flag colour patterns at the mid torso.

England crumbled under the weight of their nation’s expectations, failing to live up to their tag of the ‘Golden Generation’. They were felled by their old enemy, Germany, in the knock-out round. This issue of their home shirt was criticised in some quarters for looking like a simple polo tee. There is a star above their crest commemorating their 1966 victory but it isn’t prominent and almost looks faded into the fabric. I think this was a good move by the shirt designers Umbro, as it make an unassuming statement, something along the lines of, “Yes, we’ve won it a while back, but let’s move on.”

The Netherlands qualified for the tournament with ease, and hit decent form when the games began. Disappointingly, they were made to suffer a hat-trick of World Cup failures this time round, having contended and lost the 1974 and 1978 finals. Their home shirt’s colour is based on the historic national colour of the Netherlands, originating from the coat of arms of the Dutch founding father William of Orange-Nassau. It bears similar colours and lines to the 1998 home shirt.

Spain did well to shed their tag of perennial under achievers in the 2010 World Cup by going all the way and lifting the trophy. They started shakily, but slowly but surely conquered all those who stood in their way. Their home shirt sports their national flag colours, with a tinge of blue, often used in their shorts and away shirts.

Midway through the World Cup, I was searching for a shirt for my son. Germany, Argentina and Spain were available, but I chose Spain for him because red would hide vomit and other stains better than white or light blue. It was nice to see that bet pay off. When he comes of age, I will bring out this shirt and show him that in the year he was born, he had a World Cup winning shirt.

I’ve been asked before which is my favourite shirt in my collection and the answer is the 2007 Football Association of Singapore commemorative shirt, released in conjunction with the closure of the National Stadium and a nod to the classic FAS shirts of the past.

It harkens back to the glorious days of Singapore football when they were a part of the Malaysian Cup.

Since Nike started sponsoring our national football team in 2006, they’ve been producing simple yet attractive designs. I’ve been picking up their shirts when I could, and count their 07/08 and 08/09 shirts among my collection.

In days of yore, football shirts were simply used to tell opposing teams apart. Today, it is a £200m market in the UK alone. Collectible value aside, football shirts chart historical moments in their respective clubs and association’s history.

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