Classic shirts # 1 Middlesbrough 1973




Recently I've been looking back over the history of football shirts in England, especially and one thing that struck me as unusual was the fact that managers in the 1960s and 1970s were always meddling in kit design. Nowadays, we can't imagine the influx of overpaid foreign bosses thinking up shirt designs and derivating from the latest adidas template, but it's infinitely more imaginable that they would rather than the blokes who dominated football yesteryear.

Quite often these are the types of blokes who now talk about football losing its traditions, but in the case of Aston villa (albeit for one season only) and Crystal Palace this in the 60s and 70s saw a complete trampling on traditions.

So, hats off to football's most unlikely designer - Jack Charlton. Jack Charlton who made his name as a tough tackling centre half for England and the team fomerly known as 'Dirty, Dirty, Leeds', came up with one of the all time classic football shirt designs.

On taking over as boss of Middlesbrough in 1973 he decided to add a white band to the club's famous red shirts, so that the players could see each other. It obviously did the trick, as Boro who had been down on their luck promptly won promotion to the top flight and Jack had come up with a distinct design that remained popular for most of the 70s and has been resurrected on several occassions since.

Notes on pictures top to bottom:
Top: The Shirt
Middle: Former Boro winger alan Foggon in the shirt
Bottom: Big Jack charlton (centre) managing Boro

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Boca Juniors shirt history

Image
The first game that I will be at on Sunday sees Boca Juniors take on Paris Saint Germain. I have always wanted to go and see Boca Juniors and I can't see me getting over to Argentina any time in the near future, so I am going to have to make do with seeing them in North London. On my travels I have met plenty of Boca fans, but funnily enough they have all been Russian or Ukrainian. I am a bit disappointed that Martin Palermo has now retired, but I am still looking forward to it. Obviously to do justice to the club history of Boca Juniors I'd probably have to write a book, so here's a quick history of their kit and colours instead. When Boca were formed in 1905 they originally played in pink, but obviously came round to thinking that this was a bad idea and changed to a light blue colour later in the year. They didn't stick with this shirt for very long either and for the 3rd time in a year decided to change the shirt colour, this time to black and white stripes. The fol
Read more

shirt history AS Roma

Image
Roma were the club that I followed in Italy and although they are most famous for wearing red and yellow, hence the nickname giallo rosso the club didn't always wear those colours. AS Roma were formed in 1927 by a merger between SS Alba-Audace and Fortitudo-Pro Roma SGS with Italo Foschi being the driving force behind the merger. AS Roma could also trace their lineage back to FBC Roma who were formed in 1901 and who wore red and yellow, but the first shirts they wore took the red, white and blue of Fortitudo-Pro Roma. Roma soon established themselves at the top table of Italian football and in 1931 finished runners up to Juventus and by now had settled on red and yellow as their colours. However, you'll have to take my word for it because the picture below shows Attilio Ferraris in black and white. In 1942 Roma went one better and won their first Scudetto with Amadeo Amadei scoring 18 goals to help them secure the title. Pictured below he is wearing the change shirt with a repl
Read more

Sud Tribune, Dortmund

Image
The Sud Tribune at Westfalen is famed for the noise and support that it gives the BVB team. They started up early and carried on until well after the match had finished despite the poor result. At the end the team looked suitably disappointed when they thanked the fans. Nobody apart from the Hannover fans probably expected 96 to win. Hopefully better times for the Sud Tribune are just around the corner.
Read more