Category Archives: Goalkeepers

The evolution of adidas goalkeeper shirts – Part 10

21 Saturday Apr 2018

Posted by in Goalkeepers, Kit history

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  • See previous modules, and other goalkeeping articles, here.

We did say in the last entry in this series, Part 9 back in December, we did say that this edition would go up as far as the 1998 World Cup, but once again we reckoned without the wide variety of adidas goalkeeper shirts. At this rate of progress, we may catch up with reality by the end of 2021.

This piece will look at the 1995-96 and 1996-97 seasons, though not exhaustively – some shirts seen in 96-97 didn’t come to wider prominence until 1997-98 and so will feature in Part 11.

The summer of 1995 saw adidas’s three main UK contracts – Liverpool, Newcastle United and Rangers – given a new style, which appeared in three colourways in Britain.

Newcastle had the green/purple and grey/light blue, with different iterations of the Newcastle Brown Ale logo. The Magpies’ outfield home shirt had the oval and the away had the circular, and while each goalkeeper top had one version, they weren’t always worn with the corresponding outfield jersey.

Newcastle goalkeeper Shaka Hislop preferred to wear the same shorts and socks as his team-mates while Pavel Srnicek had his own, slightly longer, set with a number 1 on the right leg. Both the number and the left leg featured an adidas trefoil logo.

Rangers also had the grey/blue goalkeeper shirt, as well as a yellow/orange version.

Liverpool – in their final season with adidas for a decade – had the yellow/orange too, with Carlsberg rendered in two ways, and the green/purple.

This style wasn’t seen too much in continental Europe – another article very soon will look at a notable appearance in a UEFA Cup tie – but there were some American variations.

During River Plate’s successful 1996 Copa Libertadores campaign, goalkeeper Germán Burgos not only wore a version which had purple as the main colour, the green was a different shade – and he also had a version with the stripes coming from the right.

The pattern was larger on those shirts than on the ones seen in Britain, as it was on the shirt of Adrián Chávez of Club América in Mexico – but, just in case you couldn’t see it, he had it on his shorts too (thanks to Charles Pulling for bringing the River and América examples to our attention).

Club-America-1996-adidas-camiseta-portero-Adrian-Chavez-01.png

Back in Europe, one style seen on the continent which didn’t make its way to England took its cues from an outfield template released a year previously and used by France, Norway and Spain.

Featuring three ‘stripes’ of diamonds on the right-hand side, Monaco and Stuttgart both had black goalkeeper versions albeit with different accent colours, and we don’t know of any other base colour used.

Bayern Munich made it to the UEFA Cup final in 1996. Having worn the previous Predator style in the first leg against Bordeaux, Oliver Kahn had a new shirt (the outfielders wore a new white away strip) which seemed to be an upgrade, though on closer inspection it seems to have had anatomical inspiration.

It was also worn by Argentina’s Pablo Cavallero at that summer’s Olympics, but it never came to widespread prominence.

Bayern-Munich-1995-1996-torwart-trikot-Kahn-UEFA-Cup-Bordeaux-01.png

At Euro 96, adidas outfited five countries and took two distinct approaches with goalkeeper shirts.

For Spain and eventual champions Germany, they kept it plain and classy, with just contrasting black necks and cuffs and three stripes running down the arms.

Spain had a light green, while Germany goalkeeper Andreas Köpke wore a sky-blue top which was, we’d imagine, intended to reference Sepp Maier in his pomp.

For Germany’s semi-final against England, the hosts lost the toss for colours, meaning they lined out in their grey/blue ensemble. Presumably with this in mind, Köpke walked out and stood for the anthems in a darker green shirt – close to gun-metal grey – but by kick-off he was in the blue again. We’re guessing the referee felt it was less of a clash than the blue?

Germany-1996-adidas-torwart-trikot-grau-Kopke-England-01

France, Romania and Turkey had goalkeeper shirts which utilised the same design featured on many new club and country shirts. Five different colours were used.

Bernard Lama of France had a bespoke style, with the three white stripes trimmed in blue and red, while Bogdan Stelea of Romania had a similar, but different, shade of dark green.

Meanwhile, Rüştü Reçber of Turkey wore a different shirt in each of their unsuccessful group games.

That style was another which the British clubs wouldn’t use. Instead, the 1996-97 season saw adidas give Newcastle United, Rangers and new signees Crystal Palace shirts in the simpler Euro 96 style, but also one jersey each in a more ‘out there’ style.

The easier ones first – Newcastle had the same as Spain while the other two had white shirts with blue and red trim. Rangers goalkeeper Andy Goram often preferred to wear the home shorts to give himself an all-white look.

Both Newcastle and Rangers also had alternatives which were almost identical, but with a key element changed. The sleeves were black and the body featured a tequila sunrise variant, with Newcastle having a city skyline silhouette (taken from the Newcastle Brown Ales logo) while Rangers had the facade of Ibrox’s main stand.

Andy Goram wasn’t a fan of the latter, going to great lengths to avoid wearing it (see here), so it was left to his deputies Theo Snelders and Andy Dibble to pair it with varying shorts/socks and pants combinations.

Palace’s other style was based on a design which appears to have been created by adidas for Oliver Kahn. He had it in at least two colourways, with his crest featuring on the collar, shorts and socks.

For Palace’s Kevin Miller and Carlo Nash, the colours were changed to a black, red and yellow combination, while the design was also used by Cork City’s Noel Mooney, in black, green and purple.

That’s it for now. Work has already started on Part 11, so hopefully we can start cutting down on the time between instalments.

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Liverpool blue and Everton red?

01 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by in Clashes, Goalkeepers, Rarities and Oddities

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As we said in the piece looking at the seasons where Arsenal had four goalkeeper shirts, netminders have too many options nowadays.

Three options per team is standard, usually in black or an offensive dayglo shade. It’s no surprise to see your keeper clad in varying shades from game to game, unlike the days were green dominated and any change was worthy of comment.

One would think that, with alternative goalkeeper shirts so rare, finding a different colour to green wouldn’t pose a problem, but we’ve found at least two examples where Everton used a red goalkeeper shirt and also two instances of Liverpool using a blue one.

The most high-profile of these is the earliest of the four we’ll look at, Neville Southall’s shirt when Everton beat Rapid Vienna 3-1 in the 1985 European Cup Winners’ Cup final.

Everton-1985-Le-Coq-Sportif-goalkeeper-shirt-red-Cup-Winners-Cup-final-01

It drew such comment that Southall mentioned it in his autobiography, The Binman Chronicles:

The thing people ask me about most regarding the final was my goalkeeper shirt. It was red, a colour many Everton fans consider sacrilegious. But there was an odd logic to me wearing it.

Because Rapid played in green and white stripes I couldn’t wear my usual green, nor white. Black was out because that’s what the the referees played in, and so was blue for obvious reasons.

Yellow was also out because that was only allowed in international matches. Which didn’t leave an awful lot more choice. Later at Everton, I wore orange and pink and I think now you can wear whatever you want.

But back then it was a bit more straightforward: primary colours, which pretty much left red.

Of course, the fact that the game was televised live meant that the red shirt came to wider prominence, as it wasn’t a unique occurrence:

It’s interesting to note above that, while the shirt was made by Le Coq Sportif, there was a bit of guerrilla marketing for Southall’s glove sponsor Sondico on the collar.

Five years later, he would again wear red, though without being as limited in his options.

Sheffield Wednesday had a green and white change kit in 1988-89 and 1989-90 and in the first of those seasons, Southall wore a yellow version of Umbro’s ‘Hampden’ shirt when the Owls came to Goodison Park.

The Hampden was also available in grey but in January 1990, Southall used red against Wednesday.

Everton-1989-Umbro-goalkeeper-shirt-red-Sheffield-Wednesday-01

Across Stanley Park, the opposite occurred twice, too.

In Liverpool’s first season with adidas, 1985-86, Bruce Grobbelaar mainly wore yellow and occasionally white, but green – in the diagonally striped style – was favoured for 1986-87.

In the summer of 1987, Liverpool played Celtic in Tommy Burns’ testimonial at Celtic Park. It was one of the last times that the 1985-87 home kit was worn – it seems anachronistic to see John Barnes wearing it – and due to the large amounts of green on the Celtic kit, Grobbelaar changed, to a blue shirt.

Liverpool-1987-adidas-blue-goalkeeper-Grobbelaar-01

Oddly, Liverpool also played Bayern Munich that summer, in Dieter Hoeness’s testimonial, and Grobbelaar wore blue in that game too.

The new home kit was used when Liverpool played the Ireland Olympic team in August 1987 – no pictures of Grobbelaar are available but presumably he wore it then as well but this time the goalkeeper was in white:

Like Southall in red, Liverpool goalkeepers in blue wasn’t a one-off, either. When the new Premier League began in 1992-93, a noticeable new departure was that match officials now wore green shirts, rather than black.

It meant that black kits were now an option – one that Manchester United would exploit for 1993-94 – but it also resulted in the league’s goalkeepers having to deviate away from their traditional colour.

As in 1991-92, Liverpool’s alternative goalkeeper shirt was yellow, but it couldn’t be worn against Sheffield United’s yellow away kit at Anfield for the second game of the season on August 19.

It meant that David James took to the field in a top the same as Arsenal’s first-choice goalkeeper shirt that season.

Liverpool-1992-1993-adidas-blue-goalkeeper-shirt-Sheffield-United-01

Liverpool won 2-1, but clearly there were misgivings about the blue shirt, as it was the only time it was seen. Instead, a grey and black version of the shirt was pushed into action when required.

And, as far as we know, in the intervening 25 and a half years, Merseyside goalkeepers have not worn their rivals’ colours.

The evolution of adidas goalkeeper shirts – Part 9

14 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by in Goalkeepers, Kit history, Templates

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You’re forgiven if you had feared that this series had become our great unfinished symphony, given that the last instalment, Part 8, was back in July.

There were various different reasons for the delay, not least the difficulty in drawing one of the designs, which was worn by a number of goalkeepers in 1993. It’s a strange one, given that, as we saw in the last episode, adidas were putting their three-stripe about in a forceful manner on most other goalkeeper shirts back then.

This one is more in keeping with some of the outlandish Italia 90 offerings, but even then it comes with extra acid-house influence. The pattern is too difficult to describe in any meaningful way, so we’ll just present the uncrested version worn by Bulgaria goalkeeper Borislav Mikhailov when the country beat France in Paris in November 1993 to qualify for the World Cup in the USA.

Bulgaria-1993-adidas-goalkeeper-shirt-Mihailov-01

At the other end of the pitch that night, France netminder Bernard Lama was wearing the same shirt with his trademark trousers, while Erik Thorstvedt of Norway and Romania’s Florin Prunea also used it.

The only colour variation we know of was used by Fabien Barthez of Olympique Marseille, back when he had to create his own short-sleeved versions with scissors.

Olympique-Marseille-1992-1993-adidas-gardien-maillot-Barthez-01

By the time of the 1994 World Cup, adidas had a new ubiquitous style, which was dubbed the Predator range, the same as the company’s revolutionary new boot.

Irregular shaped ‘blobs’ were arranged in a loose ‘Ajax style’ on a black background, with matching shorts (both colours featured on each leg, but the left was the reverse of the right).

Some of the colourways represented new departures for adidas, but the gold and dark red, as used by Germany’s Bobo Illgner, was arguably a descendant of the Taifun style.

Germany-1994-adidas-torwartstrikot-Illgner-01

Ireland’s Packie Bonner used the same colours as Illgner, while he also had a silver/grey and purple edition.

Republic-of-Ireland-1994-adidas-goalkeeper-shirt-World-Cup-Bonner-grey-purple-01

Almost identical, but with a pinkish-red instead of purple, was the style which was used by Sweden’s Thomas Ravelli.

Sweden-Sverige-1994-adidas-goalkeeper-shirt-Ravelli-01.png

Spain’s Andoni Zubiarreta was seen in the grey and red, and also a green and grey version which no other country had.

Spain-1994-adidas-portero-camiseta-Zubizarreta-01

Ravelli and Zubizarreta’s deputy Santiago Cañizares (who played the first game against South Korea as ‘Zubi’ was suspended) both wore a blue and green shirt, which Norway’s Thorstvedt used too, but with extra shoulder padding – three panels arranged similar to the striping on the Predator boots. Mikhailov had this padding on his gold and red shirt too.

Norway-Norge-1994-adidas-goalkeeper-shirt-Thorstvedt-World-Cup-01

There were three different padding types, presumably rooted in the fact that different factories were used. The USA’s Tony Meola had wider padding but no ‘stripes’ – and his shirt had the blue and green in reverse order compared to all of the other countries.

USA-1994-adidas-goalkeeper-jersey-Meola-World-Cup-01

Meanwhile, Argentina’s Luis Islas had another padding format, as well as noticeable differences on his shirts.

As well as different shades of yellow/gold and red – and pink on his alternative – the pattern on Islas’s jerseys was rotated 180 degrees compared to the conventional style, while he didn’t have the quilting everyone else did.

Argentina-1994-adidas-portero-camiesta-Luis-Islas-01Argentina-1994-adidas-portero-camiesta-Luis-Islas-silver-pink-01

Clubwise, there was another unique colourway, seemingly only used by Rangers’ Andy Goram, with orange (cue the inevitable jokes) and grey featured.

Rangers-1994-1995-adidas-away-goalkeeper-shirt-orange-Goram-01

Goram wore the Rangers away shorts with that shirt and, with his grey and purple shirt, he went with the nearly-matching third shorts and socks.

Rangers-1994-1995-adidas-away-goalkeeper-shirt-purple-Goram-01

Meanwhile, Liverpool’s David James wore the conventional shorts early in the season before opting to wear the club’s away shorts – almost identical to those he used in 1993-94, but with the club crest in white, green and black rather than red.

Liverpool-1994-1995-adidas-goalkeeper-shirt-David-James-01

Back to USA 94 though, and two other exceptions to the Predator style. Nigeria captain Peter Rufai did wear the gold and red version against Greece, but in the country’s other three games he used a strange shirt.

It had a very busy pattern featuring the adidas trefoil, three stripes and the letters which made up the word, in varying fonts. The neck also squared off in the middle.

Rufai wore a bluey-green version…

Nigeria-1994-adidas-goalkeeper-shirt-Rufai-World-Cup-01

…and he also had it in purple, which was used by one other country.

Romania began the competition with Bogdan Stelea in goal, wearing the blue and green Predator against Colombia and Switzerland.

A 4-1 defeat in the latter game saw Stelea make way for Florin Prunea, who wore this as they qualified for the knockout stage. Prunea wore the blue and green Predator as Argentina were beaten 3-2 but he was back in the purple for the penalty shootout loss to Sweden in the quarter-finals.

Romania-1994-adidas-goalkeeper-shirt-Prunea-Sweden-01

We’ve probably said it before, but we mean it this time – it won’t be as long until the next instalment, which will take us up to the 1998 World Cup, incorporating a number of interesting styles.

Seven seasons where Arsenal’s goalkeepers wore four different coloured shirts

20 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by in Football kits, Goalkeepers, Kit history

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I like goalkeepers.

In my ‘real’ job as a sports journalist (incredibly, I have to earn money elsewhere as nobody wants to pay me to draw kits), I often find them to provide the most interesting interviews, regardless of which code they may be playing.

In a team sport, they are the individuals. The mistakes are more magnified than anyone else on the pitch (apart from the referee, of course, who is never right, it seems). There is a pressure attached which is more akin to that experienced by an individual sportsman or woman, like a golfer or tennis player.

An attacker can miss 12 chances in a game but if he gets the 13th and it happens to be the matchwinner, he is golden. Unfortunately, an error by a netminder will almost always lead to a concession and, no matter how many saves he makes before or after, it can’t be undone.

Unsurprisingly, goalkeeper kits are also a big interest, as evidenced by the series on adidas strips. While templates are often unfairly given a bad name, I do like seeing how a kit can look in different colours and a club’s goalkeeper shirts usually follow the same pattern.

Perhaps counter-intuitively though, we do feel that there are too many goalkeeper shirts about nowadays.

Around the millennium, someone in power somewhere decided that the two goalkeepers in a game should wear different colours. It seems like overkill here – to the best of my knowledge, there are exactly zero instances of anybody confusing a keeper up for a later corner with his opposite number.

The main upshot of this is that most top-level teams now have three options – see the 2017-18 Premier League handbook for the goalkeeper kits this season. It means that the thrill of seeing a goalkeeper in an alternative shirt to his usual one, caused by a clash with the opposition, is largely gone.

In the current landscape, there is still the capacity to surprise though, if a team use four different colours for GK shirts in the one season. Arsenal have ticked that box on seven occasions (to the best of our knowledge), but it might surprise you to learn that it’s a phenomenon which is 35 years old.

***

1982-83: Bob Wilson did occasionally wear blue – most notably in the 1969 League Cup final defeat to Swindon Town – but, by and large, green was the only colour used by Arsenal and most of the other clubs in the Football League.

The launch of a green and navy away kit in 1982 provided the need for alternatives for George Wood and Pat Jennings when red wasn’t worn. Blue was the most common option, but Wood wore red away to Leeds and Ipswich – not the first time it was used by an Arsenal keeper, as George Swindin wore it in the 1950 FA Cup final. Away to Middlesbrough in the cup, Jennings wore white with red trim.

 

1992-93: Arsenal returned to yellow away kits in 1983 and so only rare games against teams in green saw a deviation by goalkeepers, with blue favoured.

In 1992, the new Premier League decreed that referees would wear green instead of their usual black, forcing goalkeepers around the country to change (more overkill, in my view, as again the potential for confusion was minimal).

Arsenal opted for blue as the first-choice for goalkeepers and though green was marketed as the ‘away’, it was only really used in the cups, where officials still wore black.

As a result, grey became the de facto second choice, but both that and the blue were deemed to clash at Blackburn Rovers, meaning David Seaman wore red as Arsenal played in their ‘bruised banana’ away kit.

Arsenal played Sheffield Wednesday in both domestic cup finals, and Seaman wore green in both, with special embroidery for each game while he had also taken to removing the collars from the shirts.

 

1998-99: As someone with an interest in Gaelic games, it’s hardly a surprise to learn that there is a liking here for goalkeeper shirts which feature the same palette as the corresponding outfield kit.

Arsenal did that in 1998-99, with the club’s official merchandise catalogue indicating that the red home socks would be worn by Seaman and Alex Manninger. As far as I know, that never happened and instead the away socks, a darker navy than the shirt and shorts and with yellow trim, were used.

As in the previous two seasons, when the main goalkeeper shirt was yellow, orange was the back-up colour, but Arsenal’s first foray into the Champions League meant that two other shirts were seen, each only once.

The yellow was used in the first group game, away to RC Lens. The French side wore their navy change kit and UEFA must have decided that the orange was too close to the red and white Arsenal kit.

Then, in the return against Lens at Wembley, Arsenal wore a one-off navy third kit as their home and away both clashed with Lens’ red and yellow stripes, meaning Seaman wore green. This shirt differed from the other three in that it didn’t have the ‘braces’ style.

 

2002-03: In their first few years with Nike, Arsenal had bespoke outfield and goalkeeper designs, but by the early 2000s they were being given template styles.

This design was seen at the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan and, as far as I can recall, the grey and yellow was the first-choice and the only one retailed.

Oddly, the black was sometimes worn with the navy away kit while Seaman wore the yellow when he made his wonder-save against Sheffield United in the FA Cup semi-final while his team-mates were in gold.

The orange was worn by him as he captained Arsenal to victory over Southampton in the cup final, his last game for the club.

 

2004-05: Grey was the main shirt worn – annoyingly, the darker grey shorts matched nothing else, and Manuel Almunia would take to wearing that shirt with the black shorts later in the season.

Like two seasons previous, the choices were sometimes strange as the two-tone blue was worn with the royal blue away kit, most notably when Arsenal lost 2-0 to Manchester United at Old Trafford, ending their 49-game unbeaten run.

Not a horrific clash, but surely avoidable – referee Mike Riley wore green and United keeper Roy Carroll was in grey – so perhaps the yellow and black options weren’t available at the time.

This theory is given credence by the fact that Almunia wore yellow when United went back to Old Trafford in the league cup in December.

Note also how Lehmann cut much of the neck off his shirts. The difference can clearly be seen in this picture from the 2006 Champions League final, as Almunia prepares to replace Robert Pires after Lehmann has been sent off.

 

2010-11: Again, grey was described as the first choice, but it received far less game-time than the aqua shirt.

Again, not all choices were logical – Lukasz Fabianski wore the pink as Arsenal played in red at Wolves.

The black shirt, as worn by the emerging Wojciech Szczesny when Arsenal beat Barcelona in the Champions League, had the same sleeves as the grey shirt rather than having the design contrast.

Jens Lehmann re-signed as short-term cover when Fabianski and Szczesny were injured and was named as substitute to Almunia for the away game with Blackpool. When Almunia became injured in the warm-up, Lehmann played one last game in the aqua kit, at 41 becoming Arsenal’s oldest Premier League player – Arsenal’s outfielders wore the yellow away rather than the blue 2009-10 away which had seemingly been retained as a third shirt.

 

2013-14: The most recent instance. Black was the nominal first choice – Szczesny, by now the main goalkeeper, preferred to wear short sleeves with a baselayer underneath. The luminous yellow Nike logo would have matched with the panel at the base of the long sleeves on the black kit.

When Arsenal launched a new yellow away kit in the summer of 2013, they gave it a unique font for cup competitions, different to the cup font on the home kit. As a result, the goalkeeper kit would match up, as when Fabianski wore purple as Arsenal played in yellow when they went to West Brom in the league cup.

The grey kit was only worn against Bayern Munich in the Champions League, a game where Szczesny was sent off. Fabianski’s last game was in the green against Hull City in the FA Cup final.

Currently on eBay is this yellow Arsenal goalkeeper shirt in the same style. Whether it was a rejected sample or an actual option available in the kit-room, we’ll never know. If the latter was the case, it represents a missed opportunity for five different coloured goalkeeper shirts.

The man who knows most about Arsenal kits, Simon Shakeshaft, co-author of The Arsenal Shirt, says that there were four available to Arsenal from about 2010-14 but some remained unused.

For the 2017-18 campaign, the shirt described as first choice is dark green, as worn when Arsenal beat Chelsea to win the Community Shield. Interestingly, while only the green shirt is available in adult sizes, that and the pink option are offered in junior sizes.

The pink has yet to see game-time, with Petr Cech wearing orange in Arsenal’s first two league games.

Do you know of other clubs who have had four – or maybe more – goalkeeper colours in a season? Get in touch on Twitter if you do.

The evolution of adidas goalkeeper shirt designs – Part 8

12 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Goalkeepers, Kit history

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We’ve moved into the early 90s and this instalment is primarily focused on the adidas era, with sets of three large stripes seen anywhere but in their usual position of down the sleeves.

We’ll start though with two interesting Colo Colo shirts, worn by Daniel Morón, brought to our attention by Rob Stokes. To the best of our knowledge, nobody else had the adidas wordmark or trefoil appear in such a position at the right elbow.

While the shirt on the left above is firmly of the 80s-style construction, the other top has elements which would become common as adidas rebranded themselves. Strictly speaking, that would happen in 1991 and increase noticeablely in 1992, but Cork City gave a sneak preview of what was to come in the 1990-91 season.

Generally speaking that season, City goalkeeper Phil Harrington wore a plain yellow shirt similar to that used by Packie Bonner for the Republic of Ireland. However, in the spring of 1991, a new black shirt appeared, a prototype of the new look.

1990-1991-Cork-City-adidas-goalkeeper-kit-black-Craig-Nelson-prototype-01

The new adidas Equipment logo was sublimated on one of the green stripes, but at the time City used iron-on logos, with the crest and the adidas insignia applied on the same patch. As a result, a version with the crest on the right was used.

The kit above, with Umbro No. 1 goalkeeper shorts, was worn by on-loan Scottish goalkeeper Craig Nelson when Harrington was injured. Oddly though, the shirt wouldn’t be seen again after its brief spell in that season.

In 1991-92, a unique style was used by City, with the stripes thinner, longer and at a different angle while the cut and collar of the shirt were the older style.

1991-1992-Cork-City-adidas-goalkeeper-kit

Also in 91-92, Liverpool had a kind of a hybrid style. The collar was the traditional one, the shoulder pads similar to those on the Arsenal and Manchester shirts in 90-91, but the stripes were the newer style.

With a green away kit in use by the club that season, the yellow alternative got a few outings.

Liverpool-1991-1992-home-goalkeeper-shirt-green-adidas-EquipmentLiverpool-1991-1992-away-goalkeeper-shirt-yellow-adidas-Equipment

Euro 92 – which we looked at recently – was the first widespread sighting of the ‘proper’ new style.

Sweden’s Thomas Ravelli had one similar to that used by Cork City in 1990-91, but with the adidas logo now on the neck, which was all-blue.

Sweden-adidas-Euro-92-goalkeeper-shirt-Ravelli-01

 

Bruno Martini of France preferred red – he even wore it against Denmark, who were in their away kit.

adidas-France-yellow-goalkeeper-gardien-shirt-maillot-Euro-1992-Martini-01.png

Come the dawn of the new season in Britain, adidas’s big contracts – Arsenal, Liverpool and Rangers – all appeared to have this style, but there were differences: the vertical lower stripes were not used, and the chest stripes were slightly shorter.

Liverpool essentially used refreshed versions of the previous year (the reworked away kit now had green shorts), while blue and grey shirts were used too.

Arsenal used four goalkeeper shirts that season. With referees in the new Premier League wearing green, blue was the first choice with grey favoured as an alternative. When both of those clashed with Blackburn’s kit at Ewood Park, David Seaman wore red as the Arsenal outfielders were in their away kit.

The green was used in the cups – where referees still had black – and it was also used during the successful European Cup Winners’ Cup run of 1993-94, including without a sponsor in the final against Parma (when he opted to remove the collar).

To this eight-year-old, the main implication of the coming European Super League was that a clash between Arsenal and Rangers would mean both goalkeepers having to change shirts. Andy Gorman tended to wear the Rangers home socks, which worked well with both of his tops.

Rangers would go far in the Champions League, but were ultimately pipped to a place in the final by Olympique Marseille. Their young goalkeeper Fabien Barthez drew much comment for the way he opted to have short sleeves.

He was of course sponsorless as they beat AC Milan 1-0 in the final.

adidas-Olympique-Marseille-1993-gardien-maillot-Barthez-Champions-League-final-01

It was a victory almost as big as Cork City claiming the League of Ireland. While a yellow shirt with red stripes was used earlier in the season, for the most part Phil Harrington had a version without stripes.

With Ireland having been given a new adidas kit in September 1992, Packie Bonner was also clad in the updated style, albeit in a unique colourway. It also appears that this version was without the collar as standard.

Republic-of-Ireland-1992-adidas-Equipment-goalkeer-jersey-Bonner-01

Another adidas country with a unique approach was Spain, who had shirts that were clearly part of the adidas Equipment revolution but used by nobody else.

Andoni Zubizarreta was most often seen in a two-tone grey top like that worn by Sweden, Marseille, Bayern Munich and Liverpool but with narrower stripes and a wrapover collar.

adidas-Spain-goalkeeper-shirt-jersey-1992-1994-Zubizarreta-World-Cup-qualifiers-grey

For Spain’s final World Cup qualifier in November 1993, at home to Denmark, ‘Zubi’ wore a green version, but it proved unlucky as he was sent off.

adidas-Spain-goalkeeper-shirt-jersey-1992-1994-Zubizarreta-World-Cup-qualifiers-green-01

Strangely, his replacement Santiago Cañizares was wearing a different colour – like the grey above but with stripes over both shoulders like France or Rangers, though again thinner.

adidas-Spain-goalkeeper-shirt-jersey-1993-Canizares-World-Cup-qualifiers-Dinamarca-01

Cañizares kept a clean sheet as a 1-0 win for Spain ensured qualification along with Ireland as Denmark missed out.

Bayern Munich, so closely linked to adidas, had used the chest-stripes style during 1991-92, but in subsequent seasons they were the beneficiaries of a variation not seen elsewhere.

Worn in yellow and blueish-green – with Opel logo placing peripatetic – the ‘stripes’ were a series of white dots on a black panel, with that motif also repeated on the inside of the sleeves.

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At the World Cup in the USA in 1994, adidas kitted a lot of countries out in a style with two sets of three stripes coming from the ribs. This wasn’t that new to those who had seen the new Liverpool kits launched for 1993-94 and that style formed the basis for Pool’s goalkeeper kit too.

The black first-choice featured the adidas Tango ball logo repeated through the fabric, and was also used by Arsenal.

Liverpool-1993-1994-home-goalkeeper-shirt-black-adidas-Equipment-01adidas-Arsenal-1993-1994-goalkeeper-home-shirt-kit-01

While David Seaman wore the 1992-93 blue or green when a clash arose, Liverpool’s Bruce Grobbelaar had a bespoke alternative (though he did wear the previous season’s yellow in the infamous game against Newcastle which formed part of the basis for the match-fixing allegations against him).

Yellow with black, instead of the Tango design it had the three-stripe motif in the fabric.

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That was the only alternative colour we know of in Britain, but we finish the article where we started it, with Cork City – Phil Harrington had a purple version.

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The evolution of adidas goalkeeper shirt designs – Part 7

25 Thursday May 2017

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The latest addition to our series plays something of a sweeper role, rounding up those designs of the late 80s and early 90s which had yet to be classified, as well as looking at a developing theme in British goalkeeper shirts.

We’ll start with one as unusual for the team wearing it as the design. In the 1980s, Brazil’s Olympic committee had an all-encompassing deal with adidas. It meant that they wore this in the 1984 football competition and green shorts in 1988 as well as a beautiful blue away strip.

Goalkeeper Claudio Taffarel had blue and green versions of a wavy, gradient design, coupled with the home socks – though we’d have preferred the ‘Brazil’ across the chest.

The only variant we can find is that worn by René Higuita of Colombia in Italia 90 qualifying – indeed, he was wearing it in his sticker for the Orbis World Cup 90 part-work collection.

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As we saw in Part 6, Higuita wore three other styles at the World Cup, as did Argentina’s Sergio Goycochea, albeit only on the bench for one of them. Having taken over as first-choice goalkeeper from Nery Pumpido after the country’s runner-up finish, he continued to enjoy a varied wardrobe.

Away to England in May 1991, he was seen in another variation of the ‘scribbles’ design:

adidas-Argentina-green-goalkeeper-camiseta-jersey-1991-Goycochea

Then, later that summer, he had something plainer as Argentina won the Copa America, the yellow was favoured but the pink was used against Brazil. A nice, solid design, we know of no other examples.

If that was playing it safe, at the next Copa, in 1993, it was the complete opposite, again in a style which seems to have been unique to Argentina. A multi-coloured gradient, black shards emanating from nowhere and the crest repeated throughout the fabric – it would be hard to find something more 90s.

adidas-Argentina-portero-goalkeeper-camiseta-jersey-1993-Goycochea

In between, in at least one game in 1992 he wore another colour variant of the Taifun shirt which Bodo Illgner and Silviu Lung had worn at Italia 90.

adidas-Argentina-portero-goalkeeper-camiseta-jersey-1992-Taifun-Goycochea

That same summer, at Euro 92 Illgner was wearing it a different colourway too, one which looked perfect for Germany (left). An oddity though is the one he wore in a friendly against Brazil in 1993 (right), which featured a sprinkling of the same colour pink which had appeared on his 1990 shirt.

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Domestically, there was something different afoot, as adidas began to provide goalkeeper shirts for clubs which employed a fabric pattern similar to that seen on the outfield offerings.

This began, subtly, with their first set of Liverpool kits in 1985. While Bruce Grobbelaar did occasionally wear green versions of the dip-dye shirt of part 1 and the diagonal stripes of part 3, he was most often seen in yellow that season.

Featuring a massive collar, it had the same weave as the home, away and third kits, with the Liverbird and adidas trefoil repeating. There was also a white version, possibly only worn in the Screen Sport Super Cup semi-final first leg against Norwich in February 1986.

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With the launch of a new set of kits in 1987, the practice was stopped – or at least interrupted – as Grobbelaar went with the geometric style of part 4. Then, in 1989, Liverpool’s new ‘speckled’ home shirt was joined a green goalkeeping top in the same style.

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A year later, and Arsenal would follow a similar suit, even including the same neck style with ‘AFC’ monogram.

In the 90-91 season, David Seaman’s change blue shirt – worn against Norwich – lacked any collar trim or adidas stripes, but in 91-92 it more resembled the green shirt.

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Manchester United were a slightly different case. On their 1990-92 home shirt, the zig-zag stripes were in a lighter red to the rest, but adidas opted to make them stand out in black on the goalkeeper jersey.

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The final example of this was Scottish club Hibernian, whose shirts were similar to green versions of Arsenal’s, but with subtle differences. They too had an esoteric pattern on their 1991-93 home and away kits, repeated on yellow and red goalkeeper shirts, as well as unique three-stripe collar and cuff trim.

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However, when the won the 1991 Scottish League Cup, goalkeeper John Burridge was wearing a Taifun shirt.

***

A big, aggressive change was coming on the adidas goalkeeper shirt front, though. More in part 8.

Umbro ‘Hampden’ – a goalkeeping classic

01 Monday May 2017

Posted by in Goalkeepers, Kit history

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Regular readers of the blog will have noticed an affinity for goalkeeper shirts, most notably how the adidas designs developed from the early 80s onwards.

The German company didn’t have a monopoly on classy netminder looks, and time constraints are what prevent us from charting more. Part 7 of the adidas series is coming soon, but we will deviate slightly today with a look at an Umbro offering for which we have a lot of affection.

Dubbed ‘Hampden’ in its teamwear catalogues, it appeared in 1988 at a time when goalkeeper shirts were beginning to get busy, but it was very nicely restrained, with two-tone shoulder panels the only excesses. By the time it was superseded in 1991, it appeared almost anachronistic compared to others.

Templates get a bad rap, but we like a design that can be tailored to good effect. The clarity of colour allocation meant that the design could be easily adapted to different schemes, and we have been able to chart five different main colours used by professional teams in Britain.

Of the clubs supplied by Umbro at the time, most seem to have used it apart from Celtic and Everton*, who generally had bespoke designs. The classic green was of course the most popular, as worn by Steve Sutton and Mark Crossley of Nottingham Forest and the likes of Tommy Wright and John Burridge at Newcastle United.

1989-1991-Nottingham-Forest-green-goalkeeper-kit-Mark-CrossleyNewcastle-United-1988-1991-Umbro-goalkeeper-shirt-green-Burridge

When he was with Wimbledon, Dave Beasant often wore a yellow Spall shirt, most notably in captaining them to the 1988 FA Cup. After an unhappy spell at Newcastle United, he joined Chelsea and wore the yellow version a lot at Stamford Bridge, though he also had another, plainer, shirt.

Chelsea-Umbro-1988-1991-yellow-goalkeeper-shirt-Dave-Beasant

Theo Snelders of Aberdeen also wore yellow, but with black as a secondary colour rather than navy, swapping positions with the grey. This one also had a contrast neck.

Aberdeen-1989-1991-Umbro-yellow-goalkeeper-shirt-Theo-Snelders

Abtrust took over as sponsors in 1990, with Snelders – a Tom Cruise lookalike – having had JVC on his shirt when they beat Celtic in the 89-90 Scottish Cup final on penalties – fittingly at Hampden Park. The old stadium was fairly rundown by this stage, but, to our mind, there is something very romantic about the look of packed, open terraces.

The blue edition appeared in the Leeds United team pictures for 1988-89 and 1989-90, but the only matchworn instance we can find of it being worn by United was when Mervyn Day donned it in a friendly against Shelbourne of Ireland in the summer of 1991. Had the grey panel been white, it would have worked even better with the Whites’ yellow away shorts.

Beasant also wore it at Newcastle on occasion, while Forest also used it.

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The grey shirt wasn’t all that common, either. We had thought that Chris Turner of Sheffield Wednesday wearing an unbadged, unsponsored top was the only sighting…

Sheffield-Wednesday-1989-1991-Umbro-grey-goalkeeper-shirt-Chris-Turner

…but then Frazinho on The Glove Bag forums reminded us that there was also an England example.

In their final game of 1989, the last in the home shirt launched in 1987, England hosted Yugoslavia and Chris Woods and Dave Beasant wore this shirt along with the almost-matching shorts of the kit Peter Shilton wore at the 1986 World Cup.

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John Hallworth of Oldham wore it too. The retail grey version had blue and black panels rather than yellow and navy.

Despite being the country which played its home games at Hampden, Scotland didn’t use the shirt much. Instead, their first-choice goalkeeper strip from 1988-91 was one which might be described as a cousin of the Hampden, with a different layout of the panels.

Incidentally, England’s Peter Shilton also wore this against Scotland in 1989 when they travelled north with only a blue goalkeeper shirt available, which of course clashed with the home team. As Shilton said, there was no point in him swapping with opposite number Jim Leighton after the game.

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The version above was worn by Leighton in all three of Scotland’s games at the 1990 World Cup – despite the fact that they were in the same group as Brazil and Sweden, the red Hampden shirt remained in the kitbag. It had been worn on a few occasions in the qualifiers for Italy,

Oddly, though, it was worn by Andy Goram against Romania in October 1991, despite the fact that a new purple and green shirt had accompanied the new kit launched earlier that year. The old red shirt with the new shorts and socks wasn’t a great match-up.

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* Neville Southall of Everton did wear the red and yellow on one occasion each as his bespoke green shirt clashed with Sheffield Wednesday’s away kit in 1988-89 and 1989-90. Thanks to Paul Owens for this info.

The evolution of adidas goalkeeper shirt designs – Part 6

14 Friday Apr 2017

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It has taken a while to be able to add to this series, as adidas had so many styles at the 1990 World Cup, with many of them on the more advanced side in terms of design.

The last instalment, before Christmas, looked at half of the company’s offerings at Italia 90, with the output more varied than at any time before or since. For instance, already we have looked at two shirts worn by Sergio Goycochea after took over as Argentina goalkeeper following injury to Nery Pumpido, but in the opening game against Cameroon, Pumpido wore something which was almost unique.

It was grey shirt with an irregular pattern, not representative of anything in particular as far as we can see. In fact, the only other example we could find was a yellowy-orange version, worn by Goycochea for Racing Club.

adidas-Argentina-grey-goalkeeper-camiseta-jersey-1990-Pumpido

Incidentally, the shirt Goycochea wore for the latter stages of the tournament, the one we dubbed ‘the Space Invaders’ style, was also used by Colombia’s René Higuita, except that the pattern was upside-down (Argentina on left, Colombia on right)

Like Argentina, Colombia also had three completely different designs on show. In the first game against the United Arab Emirates, Higuita wore a grey shirt with a herringbone pattern on the front (below left), and then for the Yugoslavia and West Germany matches he had the one seen above.

Colombia met Cameroon in the second round and this time Higuita was in a different grey shirt (below right), with baggier sleeves and an arrow motif.

The latter style, in blue, was also worn by West Germany’s Bodo Illgner against Colombia.

adidas-West-Germany-Taifun-goalkeeper-blue-torwart-trikot-jersey-1990-Illgner

However, when one thinks of Illgner at that World Cup, it is his other shirt which comes to mind, the design known as the Taifun. He would wear a silver, black and pinky-purple version, with Romania’s Silviu Lung donning a silver and blue edition against Argentina and the Republic of Ireland.

At the time, we weren’t too keen on it, but now we can appreciate the the level of design involved. The shirt would appear in two other colourways, as we will see in the next part in the series.

Lung was another of the three-shirt brigade. Against the USSR, he wore the same purple and green style that Pumpido and Goycochea wore for Argentina against the Soviets (see Part 5). Then, for the match against Cameroon, Lung wore another distinct design, this one featuring what can only be described as scribbles across the torso.

Incidentally, none of the Romania shirts at the tournament, outfield or goalkeeper, featured a crest.

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It was a look which a few other countries also had. Jan Stejskal of Czechoslovakia and the USA’s Tony Meola had a yellow version with grey collar and cuffs and grey and black scribbles, while Yugoslavia’s Tomislav Ivković also wore yellow, but with black collar and cuffs and seemingly only grey scribbles, though red and black versions exist too.

Incidentally, he only wore this in the knockout stages against Spain and Argentina, having had ‘badge-engineered’ Uhlsport shirts in the group stage.

As mentioned above, Meola wore the same as Stejskal for all of the USA’s games, but substitute goalkeeper David Vanole was clearly allowed some leeway as he appeared in both blue and dark grey shirts on the bench.

We’ll be back very soon with Part 7, as the designs in the 1990s began to become more and more brash, coupled with adidas’s own rebranding under the adidas Equipment heading.

The evolution of adidas goalkeeper shirt designs – Part 5

15 Thursday Dec 2016

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The usual refresher course – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

Incredibly, adidas produced nine different designs for the countries it supplied at the 1990 World Cup in Italy, so we have split the offerings into two different posts, with four here (covering seven countries) and the others to follow.

Italia 90 was the first time the Republic of Ireland reached the World Cup finals and it was a famous summer for the country – in years to come, social commentators would draw a link between Jack Charlton’s side reached the quarter-finals and a subsequent improvement in the economy. This gives some indication of how the whole thing captured the national imagination:

Ireland reached the last eight by beating Romania in a penalty shootout, with Packie Bonner’s save from Daniel Timofte allowing David O’Leary to score the winner.

Bonner was clad in an unfamiliar grey that day as his normal shirt – a plain yellow, similar to his one at Euro 88 but featuring the same fabric pattern as the outfield shirt – clashed with the Romanians. The grey differed in that there was no pattern and the three stripes only went from shoulder to cuff. The slightly mismatching socks meant that each element of the kits had three stripes in differing colours.

A nice design which was common at this World Cup saw use by five different nations, in six different colourways. The lower part of the body and sleeves featured contrasting panels, with a third colour then used for the collar and cuffs. Belgium goalkeeper Michel Preud’homme wore two versions, with unique padded shorts:

The only colour-scheme which was repeated was used by Sweden’s Thomas Ravelli and Thomas N’Kono of Cameroon, who was also seen in blue and grey. Like Preud’homme’s, Ravelli’s shirt had an extra adidas trefoil.

The remaining two examples worn in Italy (we specify ‘worn’ as there was a black and yellow Yugoslavia shirt but their goalkeeper Tomislav Ivković preferred to play in Uhlsport shirts with the adidas logo affixed) were by players who didn’t start the competition as first-choice.

While Rinat Dasayev of the USSR wore one of the styles featured in Part 6, when he was dropped, his replacement Aleksandr Uvarov opted for a black and grey edition of this design.

Nery Pumpido, a veteran of Argentina’s 1986 win, had worn a unique style in the opening loss to Cameroon and then broke his leg in their game against the Soviet Union. His purple and shirt had a crest but oddly substitute Sergio Goycochea’s didn’t.

Come the knockout stages – all the way through the final, encompassing penalty-shootout heroics against Italy in the semis – Goycochea would have a new look, not unlike a computer game (he wore the same socks as his team-mates, so the blue were used in the final against West Germany).

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Also with a look sported by nobody else was the Netherlands’ Hans van Breukelen, whose shirts featured a kind of checkered look and an anachronistic large flappy collar, while the white shorts and socks set him apart from practically everyone else.

Though the clear part in the middle might point towards consideration for a sponsor’s logo if used by a club team, we have no evidence of the design being worn by anyone else.

The evolution of adidas goalkeeper shirt designs – Part 4

09 Wednesday Nov 2016

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Refresher course – Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

It has been so long since we visited this series that this update will encompass three different styles used in the late 80s. After this, we will look at Italia 90 and that was something of a mother lode for GK shirts, so it’ll be split into two.

The diagonal design which Part 3 focused on had its high point at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, but even then it was being superseded. While the cut and the collar stayed the same, the fabric pattern was altered, with the uniform stripes replaced by an irregular miscelleny of shapes. What was also different was that the tonality was darker, whereas the diagonals were lighter than the body and sleeves.

For shorthand, we’ll call it the geometric pattern and it’s one we’d most associate with Soviet Union goalkeeper Rinat Dasayev, who always had the look of a conscientious journalist wrestling with his conscience as to whether he should break a story which might bring down a government.

He was one of those to premiere the new look in 1986 and still had it two years later, captaining the USSR to the Euro 88 final. Generally, he favoured yellow but often wore it in blue too.

Harald Schumacher, and later Bodo Illgner, used those two colours as well but, as with the previous style, West Germany lived up to the organisational stereotype and had a red version ready for use if needed. Grey was favoured by Hans van Breukelen, who was between the sticks as the Netherlands won the European Championship.

Also in yellow and blue on occasion was Belgium’s Michel Preud’homme but, pleasingly, the adidas stripes on his shirt were the same as on the country’s white away kit, featuring the colours of the national flag.

In England, goalkeeper shirts – for so long rigidly regulated – were slowly becoming more adventurous and so the two-tone green nature of this was almost imperceptible compared with others. Liverpool, Manchester United and Queens Park Rangers were among those to wear it along with Arsenal. Oddly, John Lukic used it in Arsenal’s first two seasons after switching to adidas, but then, having graduated to the newer style below, had reverted back by the end of 1988-89:

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Another variation was seen on Norberto Scoponi of Argentinean side Newell’s Old Boys. As well as the (wider) white collar and sleeve stripes (three individual stripes, as opposed to the five-stripe strip used in Europe), this also featured the pattern on the sleeves.

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As mentioned in Part 3, France’s Joel Bats retained the horizontal pinstripes for Euro 84 rather than wearing the diagonal stripes, and he was late to this part too. While he would wear it for some Euro 88 qualifiers, in Mexico he had a unique design which we can’t find evidence of anyone else wearing.

While it did have a tonal pattern, it featured rectangles and there were also black strips where the body met the sleeves, almost giving the effect of wearing a sleeveless windcheater.

As mentioned above, adidas’s English clubs got a new look for 1987-88, but while it did feature on outfield shirts of teams like Bayern Munich, Bulgaria, East Germany and Sweden, as far as we can make out it wasn’t used by goalkeepers anywhere else. While on first glance it looked like the older diagonal stripes, this actually featured parallelograms arranged to look like stripes.

Having had a plain yellow GK shirt with a red collar initially after signing with adidas – yellow goalkeeper shirts hadn’t been allowed in England in the past, apart from the national side – Liverpool’s Bruce Grobbelaar was back in the more traditional green.adidas-Liverpool-goalkeeper-shirt-jersey-1987-1988-Bruce-Grobbelaar.png

A change was required for two games against Celtic in April 1989, matches played for very different reasons, and the Zimbabwe international had two similar, but different, shirts. The first game was the grandly titled Dubai Champions Cup on Tuesday, April 4 – little more than a knees-up, incredible to think that such an exhibition was allowed in the run-in to the domestic season. Here, Grobbelaar wore a yellow shirt with black stripes but the collar and cuffs were a jarring white, as was the Candy logo with adidas and the club crest in red.

Eleven days after that game was the Hillsborough tragedy, and at the end of April, Celtic generously arranged a match to benefit those affected. This time, the collar and cuffs were black, with Candy in red.

In the summer of 1989, the new Liverpool kit featured a white ‘speckled’ effect and this was replicated on the goalkeeper shirt, which was something of a new departure (more anon). Arsenal and Manchester United kept the diagonal boxes but this time with raglan sleeves and white piping.

Both had light-blue back-up versions but, given how few teams in England wear green, they weren’t needed that often. However, while United had a brand-new green and black goalkeeper design in 1990-91 (again taking cues from the new outfield shirt), there was no alternative colour and so, for the European Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final against Legia Warsaw, Les Sealey had to go with the previous look.