Football Shirts and Soccer Jerseys - A history, overview and guide

Football Shirts and Soccer Jerseys help define a football club and its supporters. They carry history and pride, and often represent a certain era of a football team. Furthermore, they are symbolic of a particular club.

Football shirts were first introduced in the late 1870's with very basic colour schemes and designs. However, over the course of the past one hundred and thirty years there have been many advances. For example, badges, crests and later numbers started being sewn into football shirts which was a development made in the 1930's, soon to become an official requirement and an imperative feature to all football shirts.

As time went on, regulations regarding football shirts became more and more relaxed and the opportunity to create innovate and creative designs was there. This resulted in many new types of football shirt designs including the traditional 'V-Neck' and the more modern 'Crew Neck'. Both still used by teams today as a basic starting structure when designing a football shirt.

In recent years, football shirts have become increasingly popular worldwide. It is thought of as a necessity to wear one when going to a football match and for those higher up, it has become a great source of income. Cheap football shirts are now widely available, not just direct from the club, however, from a very wide range of websites and shops.

Football Shirts are produced by top designer sport makes including Nike, Adidas, Puma, Reebok and Le Coq Sportif. All the brands have their own specific style, however, in recent times it has become very fashionable to keep the design aspect of the shirt to its bare minimum, concentrating on the technology side instead.

Nike usually produce very contemporary designs, with a slickness about them that appeal to skilful players. Adidas also produce good cheap football shirts. There is quite a diverse range of football shirts Adidas produce, from some very futuristic designs to ones with more detail while retaining their iconic three stripes from Adidas. Another major football shirt brand is that of Puma, they design the shirts of many clubs and international teams including Parma, Tottenham and Italy. There are some noticeable similarities with their designs and Nike's, with their simple yet modern and slick look to them. Reebok, otherwise known as 'RbK' design the most simplistic football shirts, most recognisably for Bolton in the Premiership. Lastly, Le Coq Sportif is a new emerging brand that also manufacture cheap football shirts which has the same conventions of the others designs: simplistic, slick and modern.

With many of the designs having noticeable similarities, often the main differences are in the technology of the shirt. For example, reversed seams in an attempt to make football shirts more comfortable and new fabrics introduced by different companies. One advance we may see in the near future with football shirts is in-built pulse machines and sweat monitors, which would help discover any potential problems with the players heart rate or fatigue levels. A prototype was constructed by Northumbria University in the United Kingdom. This emphasises the importance of technologies in modern football shirts, rather than the actual design. Some top brands may choose to implement these technologies in future football shirt designs.

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