Kit (association football)
Football kit has evolved significantly since the early days of the sport when players typically wore thick cotton shirts, knickerbockers and heavy rigid leather boots.
With the rise of advertising in the 20th century, sponsors' logos began to appear on shirts, and replica strips were made available for fans to purchase, generating significant amounts of revenue for clubs.
[2] While most players wear studded football boots ("soccer shoes"[3][4] or "cleats"[4] in North America), the Laws do not specify that these are required.
Shin pads must be covered entirely by the stockings, be made of rubber, plastic or a similar material, and "provide a reasonable degree of protection".
[6] In some cases both teams have been forced (or chose) to wear their second choice away kits; such as the match between Netherlands and Brazil in the 1974 FIFA World Cup where they wore white and dark blue rather than their first choice of orange and yellow, respectively; and the match between Netherlands and Spain in the 2014 FIFA World Cup where they wore dark blue and white rather than their home colors of orange and red, respectively.
[19][20] The rules specify that all players, regardless of gender, must wear the same kit, however in September 2008 the Dutch women's team FC de Rakt made international headlines by swapping its old strip for a new one featuring short skirts and tight-fitting shirts.
In Portugal's match against England in the Euro 2004 tournament, Ricardo drew much comment for deciding to remove his gloves during the penalty shoot-out.
[36] In 1848, it was noted at Rugby that "considerable improvement has taken place in the last few years, in the appearance of a match... in the use of peculiar dress consisting of velvet caps and jerseys".
The first standard strips emerged with the founding of the FA, the Football Association's initial minutes recording some of the club colours, such as the Royal Engineers A.F.C.
[7] Blackburn Rovers, for example, adopted shirts of a halved design based on those of the team for former pupils of Malvern College, one of the schools where the sport had developed.
Their original colours of light blue and white were chosen to reflect an association with Cambridge University, where a number of the club's founders had been educated.
In 1890, the Football League, which had been formed two years earlier, ruled that no two member teams could register similar colours, so as to avoid clashes.
[51] Two years later, Argentina's Club Atlético Independiente adopted red shirts after watching Nottingham Forest play.
[52] In 1904, the Football Association dropped its rule that players' knickerbockers must cover their knees and teams began wearing them much shorter.
In this period goalkeepers generally wore a heavy woollen garment more akin to a jumper than the shirts worn by outfield players.
Rather than the numbers being added to the clubs' existing strips, two special sets, one white and one red, were made for the final and allocated to the two teams by the toss of a coin.
[56] In the period immediately after the war, many teams in Europe were forced to wear unusual kits due to clothing restrictions.
Although they cost twice as much as existing styles, the boots were a huge success and cemented the German company's place in the football market.
The FC Dynamo Moscow team that toured Western Europe in 1945 drew almost as much comment for the players' long baggy shorts as for the quality of their football.
The 1960s saw little innovation in kit design, with clubs generally opting for simple colour schemes which looked good under the newly adopted floodlights.
[7] In 1973, German team Eintracht Braunschweig signed a deal with local alcohol producer Jägermeister to display its logo on the front of their shirts.
[64] However Spanish clubs FC Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao refused to allow sponsors' logos to appear on their shirts as recently as 2005.
[65] Until 2011 Barcelona refused paying sponsors in favour of wearing the UNICEF logo on their shirts while donating €1.5 million to the charity per year.
[75] In 1996, Manchester United notoriously introduced a grey strip which had been specifically designed to look good when worn with jeans, but abandoned it halfway through a match after manager Alex Ferguson claimed that the reason why his team was losing 3–0 was that the players could not see each other on the pitch.
[77] A brief fad arose for players celebrating goals by lifting or completely removing their shirts to reveal political, religious or personal slogans printed on undershirts.
This led to a ruling from the International Football Association Board in 2002 that undershirts must not contain slogans or logos;[78] since 2004 it has been a bookable offence for players to remove their shirts.
[81] The high prices charged for replicas have also led to many fans buying fake shirts which are imported from countries such as Thailand and Malaysia.
[82] The chance for fans to purchase a shirt bearing the name and number of a star player can lead to significant revenue for a club.
In the first six months after David Beckham's transfer to Real Madrid the club sold more than one million shirts bearing his name.
[86] Manufacturers Puma AG initially added "invisible" black sleeves to comply with the ruling, but later supplied the team with new one-piece singlet-style tops.
