The History of Football Shirts and Football Strips
Different styles of football shirts and strips
Like fashion as a whole, football shirts and strips have changed over the years. Also like fashion, styles have come back in e.g. in the 70s we all laughed at photos from the 1950s of Stanley Matthews wearing those ridiculous looking long shorts! - Now we all wear them and laugh at the short, tight brief football shorts that were worn in the 1970s and 1980s. Similarly, football shirts have changed styles and come back into fashion. Collared football shirts were the order of the day in the 50s, then round necks came in in the 60s and 70s and by the 90s to date, either or both were used from season to season.
Football fans have changed too..
While the players' football shirts and strips fashions have come and gone, and come back again, the football fan's attitude to match dress has changed aswell. Since football began football supporters attended football matches in their usual day to day attire which up until the late 1960s was usually in the form of a suit and tie. It is quite an eye opener when watching old footage of football games to see all the crowd in shirt, suit, tie and bowler hat! (by the way, not many, if any, ladies attended football games in those days). Then as attitude to day to day fashion changed in the late 60s, early 70s, people still attended football games in their day to day attire which by then was usually comfortable trousers or jeans, shirt or t-shirt, sweater and coats or jackets before a distinct change swept the country and indeed the world in the late 80s, early 90s. By now if you didn't attend a football match in a replica of your teams shirt (and sometimes replica shorts in the autumn/spring months) you were in the minority in the ground.
Replica football shirts and football strips were sold by the football clubs from the 1970s, but the difference then was that the purchased football shirts and football strips were only used by kids to play football in the street or park in. Nowadays football shirts and strips are bought to wear at the match and now it is not only the kids who wear them, you see men and ladies in their 60s wearing them. This is something Michael Parkinson commented on in his book as a pet hate to see grown men wearing football shirts at football matches!
Replica football shirts is biggest seller
Replica football shirts and strips is now big business and is most club shop's biggest selling item.
