England Goalkeeper Shirt

I don't know how it's happened but somehow I have managed to write this blog for 4 or 5 months without posting about one of my geekier interests, football shirts. I have been meaning to redress this for sometime and no time seemed better than today, after England secured their place at next summer's World Cup in South Africa thanks to a 5-1 victory over Croatia.

England have generally had so-so kits in the last decade, nothing too awful comes to mind, but certainly nothing has yet compelled me to ever go out and purchase one. The new home and goalkeeper shirts have changed this with their sharp, elegant and simple design which embrace the best of the past while avoiding the trap of being too self-consciously 'retro'. They are in marked contrast to the previous few home shirts which have laboured under the 'need' to lob a load of red trim onto them, often in less than subtle approximations of the St. George's cross.

The change in direction from the kit manufacturer Umbro may or may not demonstrate the influence of Nike's aesthetic following the American giant's purchase of Umbro last year. What is certain is that there has been a clear upswing in the quality of Umbro's designs for it's roster of teams such as West Ham, Sunderland and Manchester City since the beginning of the 2008-09 football season. Not only are they renegades from the prevailing (surely cost-driven) ethos of the big manufacturers such as Nike, Puma and Adidas to hand out virtually identical template designs to as many of their teams as possible; the quality of the individual designs are also of great quality.

Of the new shirts it is the goalkeepers that attracts me the most. Usually keeper kits aren't much to write home about, and fans don't buy or wear them unless they they want to wear them to actually play football in, so what is different about the 09-11 iteration? Firstly, the deep forest green is simple and traditional. It conveys strength and a certain masculine dignity. Secondly the fit. Umbro have made much fuss over their supposed 'tailored style' for the new England kits, and while it is largely marketing gloss, the new shirts are cut well and come in a greater number of sizes (chest 34, 36, 38 etc as opposed to just S, M, L). Coupled with the new cotton-based fabric which is thicker and less shiny than usual shirts the feel of the shirts are much more like that of a normal t-shirt - i.e. even though a keeper shirt it feels like something that I could actually wear as part of a regular outfit.