Football kits have evolved significantly since the early days of the sport when players typically wore thick cotton shirts, knickerbockers and heavy rigid leather boots. In the twentieth century, boots became lighter and softer, shorts were worn at a shorter length, and advances in clothing manufacture and printing allowed shirts to be made in lighter synthetic fibers with increasingly colorful and complex designs. 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.
A number of advances in kit design have taken place since 2000, with varying degrees of success. In 2002 the Cameroon national team competed in the African Cup of Nations in Mali wearing shirts with no sleeves, but FIFA later ruled that such garments were not considered to be shirts and therefore were not permitted under the Laws of the Game. 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. FIFA ordered the team not to wear the tops but the ruling was disregarded, with the result that the Cameroon team was docked six points in its qualifying campaign for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, a decision later reversed after an appeal. More successful were the skin-tight shirts designed for the Italian national team by manufacturers Kappa, a style subsequently emulated by other national teams and club sides.
Over the next few weeks we’ll be posting the newly announced kits for each nation taking part in Euro 2016 in an exciting countdown to the start of the football extravaganza. Among them we will see a wide selection of football shirt designs from PUMA, NIKE and the like - Shirts that excite us, tell a story, have deeper meaning, cultural significance or just plain look good!
