Football T-Shirts… because soccer ain’t real!

I’m no big football fashion fan, perhaps it’s the shirts that most UK clubs offer. More than likely it’s all due to a succession of lost Saturday mornings at the tender age of eight, a divorcee dad who worked Saturdays, and the knowledge that however much I wanted to like the game I just wasn’t going to get any better at it. The same can be said for most sports, it’s ironic but if someone did a survey I’m sure they’d find many people in the design and arts trade actually fail miserably at sports. Could it be that a lack of hand eye co-ordination steers your career towards the arts, and too much sways you towards sports? That would be mad.

Anyway first point, ’soccer’ - the word itself totally and utterly sucks, just because a small minority of the world (or at least a lesser population than Europe or China), who happen to live in North America choose to call an offshoot of Rugby ‘American Football’ doesn’t mean the rest of world have to tag along. I’d love to see the word deleted from the dictionary, it’s outdated nonsense. Soccer as a term has been sidelined since the 1950’s, it’s so old school it’s painful. The world has moved on, these days we’ve so many countries competing in the game that it truly deserves to be called by it’s true name, football. Stuff anyone who doesn’t agree, you’re outnumbered.

On a lesser point, how uninspiring are football shirts? About as uninspiring as you can get I’d say. I suppose they don’t want to get bogged down in fashion, although you can leave Beckham out of that loop, his wife wouldn’t let him. If you take a look at most club shirts in the world you’re unlikely to find anything particularly inspirational, I mean most of them could just as easily be for a contract cleaning firm or a security guard uniform, and what’s more they bring you grief at every bar crawl in Europe. If you want a bottle over your head step into the wrong town with the wrong club shirt on a Saturday night and chant. That will do it. What’s more it just spells ‘lout’ to a lot of women out there. Football on the brain? Most women will think, no conversational skills, no understanding of the opposite sex, drunk… It’s not fair I know, but the plain fact is footballers don’t wear club shirts on their night out, contract cleaners don’t wear their uniform when they’re partying either, it’s just common sense to try something more subtle.

I got an email today from Gfunk & Batz today, no, they’re not the latest duo to hit the hip hop scene, in fact they’re an Australian t-shirt label with a passion for football, I don’t know who Gfunk is, but I’m guessing Steven Batzogiannis is Batz. He asked for a review of Scissor Kick (see image left) -’From the streets of Sao Paulo comes Scissor Kick… ‘. Although their collection is rather limited at the moment, I’ve broken one of my own rules and thought I’d give them a mention anyway, if only for the fact that the thinking behind their label struck a chord.

This site sells football shirts that you wouldn’t be embarrassed to wear on a night out, unlike the aforementioned club shirts that fund the player transfers for all of European, Russian and American billionaire club owners. It’s just like merchandising, if the movie doesn’t make it, maybe the t-shirts will. More people own a Manchester United t-shirt than all the tickets they’ve ever sold, in the history of the game. You can be on the other side of the world and feign support for a premiere team and no one will bat an eyelid. However I doubt that most of them are official, the market is awash with fake copies.

G & B have taken it upon themselves to improve the image of football fans, drawing inspiration from vintage and modern sources, they seem to lean towards the South American view of the beautiful game, which adds an essential edge of style and glamour to the niche. Take a look at these tees:-

Pitch is a beauty! I don’t normally go for football shirts as you must’ve realised by now, but this is a classic in the making, Slight overtones of ‘Pong‘, and all those first TV console games the majority of us have binned since. I particularly love the twist, I don’t mean a conceptual twist as such, but essentially that is one hell of a bent pitch. I can imagine all kinds of enormous HDTV screens hovering over stadiums in the distant future, à la Futurama

One up for Futebol (which I guess is what we all should call the game seeing as the Brazilians get so much of the glory), great style, great concept. I’m not sure about the logo though, I’m not keen on logos, I’d rather see a small detail on the back, just below the neckline, but that’s just a personal preference.

The irony is that what seemed modern ten years ago now looks retro, which is a good thing don’t get me wrong, I’m as retrogressive as they come, I even have an old Raleigh Chopper rusting in my basement, I love it to death but I wouldn’t be seen dead trying to ride it, besides the gears are awful even if the design does make you feel as if you’re going to pull up to warp drive.

I transgress, as usual, but it’s rare I find an original retro t-shirt these days. The neo-industrial green only increases the tech/geek vintage style. It almost makes me yearn for a Tron t-shirt, then again I think this one’s better, or at least more grown-up!

If there’s one thing that rings my bell it’s retro. Retro, retro, retro. I don’t like the way the retro market has been flooded with tat over the last decade, you could buy original geek tees from the 70’s on Ebay just a few years ago, now you’ll have to wade through licensed reprints of everything from Knight Rider and The Hulk to My Little Pony and Marvel/DC junk before you find something even remotely original. Neo-retro is the way to go, make up history, even better design items that blend the future and the past, as Pitch has done. A cut above the rest I’d say.

Rising Sun is another great retro football tee from Gfunk and Batz, I particularly like the simplicity and no-nonsense graphic design, I’d like to see more like this and Pitch in the collection. Football is all very well but as with all popular t-shirts design comes first.

I’m guessing the Japanese text translates as their label and title which is a really smart touch, sure it may annoy a few Japanese football fans but to me it simply looks the part. The funny thing is they could be writing anything there and I doubt the vast majority of their customers would know! There’s been a recent surge in foreign expletive slogan tee shirts out there which gives me a few ideas for future tees, but for now we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt :p

G&B’s t-shirt colours are noticeably richer than usual, I have to admit they really do choose their shirts carefully, there’s red and then there’s RED!

Extremely samurai, very ninja indeed, the martial arts influence definitely comes through in Rising Sun, and to top it off the sun is a football. Perhaps a hint at the rising influence of Asia in world football?

I wonder how the game would change if China started buying up the world’s premiere clubs left, right and centre?

I’d say that G&B have plenty of promise for the future, I suspect they’ve managed to tap into a healthy and burgeoning new niche market here, stylish football t-shirts could be the next craze, who knows. What I do know is that these guys definitely have their hearts in the right place.

Just to make up the numbers here’s one of my own designs from the archive, (yes I have designed one football related t-shirt), and it’s called American Football available at CafePress.com

Anyway it’s having a dig at the world’s compliance with the term ’soccer’, that as far as I’m concerned doesn’t exist, or rather hasn’t for almost half a century!

The power of the beautiful game can inspire us all in some way or another, for me it’s humour, for G&B it’s style, and for the legions of fans out there, it’s a way of life!