Let’s Not Hear It For… Sponsors’ Logos On Football Kits

Ollie Irish

26th, July 2010

11 Comments

By Ben Cornelius

I’m happy to admit, in the close season one of the main things that keeps my football mind busy is anticipation of the new kits. Not just for my team, but for others too. True, football is about the game and not fashion. But for some reason every summer I can’t wait to see what monstrous creation Tottenham will be forced to wear come August.

But, inevitably, as the leaked photos filter through and then the official launch comes around, that familiar sense of disappointment hits me, neatly folded with a bloody great sponsor on the front. This brings me to my first qualm with modern kits: sponsors.

I would like to ask readers, have you ever bought anything from or even merely visited the site of any company purely because their logo is on the front of a footy shirt. So, I can’t quite decide between that Sony TV and the Samsung… Well, I suppose Chelsea do have Samsung on the front of their shirt. Yes, I’ll go for the Samsung then. Rubbish.

Sponsors serve one purpose only: to ruin the shirts of our beloved teams. More often than not, the logos are ugly and way too big. To be honest, I would rather lose the sponsorship money and thus not be able to afford a ‘summer swoop’ for Titus Bramble, than have yet another kit adulterated.

Football is already replete with mercenaries. Agents, debt-ridden owners and the splendid chaps at FIFA, for example. But I would prefer not to be reminded, every time I look down, of the money-grabbing enterprise that football has become. Which is why I am proposing that sponsorless shirts should be available for all fans to buy. We are not watched by millions every week, so why should we have 118mansionbetgambling.com emblazoned across our chests? We are not billboards.

The capture of the big-money sponsor seems to be all that matters to chairmen these days. Take the new Spurs kit. On its own its quite beautiful. Simple. Retro. Classy. With the addition of Autonomy’s (A top ten FTSE 100 company and market leader in shit software no one gives two shits about) hash of a logo it is RUINED. For God’s sake Levy, at least get a sponsor we have heard of! And you know what pisses me off the most? This is going to sound very Gok Wan here, but, they couldn’t be arsed to even change the logo colour so it matched the shirt. There are two different shades of blue and it looks bloody awful. At least Etihad changed the colour of its logo to tie in with the new Man City away kit. (At City’s request, no doubt.)

Puma have designed two of the worst kits in the Premier League era – namely Tottenham’s new away and third kits. Obviously they used up most of their creative juice on the home kit and tried to fit as many collars as they could onto the other two. The dark blue strip is evil. Pure evil. I would much rather have swine flu than pay £45 (you read that correctly) to put that on my back. It looks like they sewed pieces of five different kits together. There’s pointless detailing everywhere. As if Peter Crouch hasn’t got enough to deal with looks-wise, he’s now got to flick on long balls whilst wearing this atrocity:

By contrast, props go to Man City and Umbro for their classy new kits. Umbro have produced some beautiful kits of late (to my mind, they are churning out the best strips at the moment, by some distance) and they have managed to keep City’s sponsor from ruining yet another shirt. Puma, take note.

Posted in Kits & fashion, Opinion, Tottenham Hotspur

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11 Comments

  1. Ed says:

    Perhaps teams should just have their team name across their chests, à la the Peruvian giants that are Deportivo Wanka.

    http://www.inthestands.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/deportivo-wanka.jpg

  2. mitchell says:

    The color of the sponsor actually matches the color of the name/number on the back of the shirt. spurs have had this two-tone blue before, not sure why. i will say that the home kits looked quite good in person (i saw spurs play in the usa)

  3. spurs4life says:

    WOW you people make me sick….Its a fucking Kit nothing special…OH no my teams wearing some red on it what ever are we going to do…

    Get alife you tools

  4. Simon Crispino says:

    Is it not the simple fact that a sponser is on our shirt for financial reasons? Do u not get that fact? That Autonomy will in fact be paying us £9m per season yo have their logo on our shirts..

    As for the 3rd.. It looked absolutely stunning against San Jose.. Very smart.. U can go and support Citeh if you like there boring Umbro kit so much!

  5. Rod 81 says:

    Stop wasting your time writing this shit! Don’t you have a life?

  6. Jorge says:

    i agree with your view, but there’s also been a sort of an identity created along with the main shirt sponsor. Liverpool and Carlsberg or Inter and Pirelli are examples of this.
    either way, posted a link in my blog to your article, it deserves to be read by an even wider audience :)

    http://porta19.blogspot.com/2010/07/patrocinadores-nas-camisolas-um-crime.html

    cheers,
    Jorge

  7. Ben Cornelius says:

    Thx Jorge

    Your right about the identity aspect. Especially in Liverpools case. Which is why it will be such a shame to see a bank across their chests next season. They have done well to keep carlsberg for so long. I wish other teams would show that level of commitment to one sponser rather than running to a new sponser every season in pursuit of an extra tenner.

  8. Thrillson says:

    Chaps, I like your articles on kits.

    Liverpool and Carlsberg? Bring back Candy!

    Similar to Newcastle and Brown Ale sponsor.

  9. LuvTheKits says:

    I don’t see what’s so terrible with this kit. Beside, some teams have nice logos that go well with the shirt, and yes, I have looked up a few companies ’cause I saw it on the shirts.

  10. Ryan says:

    I might actually wear a jersey out of the house one day if they looked like they did in the 60’s; i.e. no sponsors.

    I always thought this sucked too. But it’s a brilliant marketing strategy really. $11-12 million sounds low for the rights.

  11. Harley says:

    Why does some clubs, on some games not wear their badges also only colours..

Leave a Reply to Harley