5. Complaining about the sponsor on every new shirt
Football shirts have become fashion, and I’m very much part of that. I went to a gig wearing a St Pauli shirt, despite being unable to give you their strongest starting XI, and I’ve got plenty of other shirts whose appeal goes well beyond a deep personal commitment to the team.
There’s nothing wrong with that. A football shirt can do much the same job as a band T-shirt, and people are entitled to like different designs. What frustrates me is the annual outrage when supporters discover that their club’s new shirt has a sponsor on it.
“That sponsor ruins it.”
The sponsor isn’t simply a decorative flourish chosen by somebody in the design department. It’s a business putting money into your football club in return for exposure, and having its name across thousands of replica shirts is a fairly important part of the arrangement.
You might prefer a shirt without it, but the company hasn’t paid to be invisible. Every summer, though, someone appears to regard the sponsor as an inexplicable act of vandalism rather than part of the reason the club can afford to operate.
Personally, I think sponsors can help make a shirt. The big yellow Pickfords branding on an old Lincoln kit had character and stood out, which was rather the point. Blending tastefully into the background isn’t necessarily the highest achievement in shirt sponsorship.
Like the kit or don’t like it. I’d just appreciate getting through one launch without somebody sounding personally betrayed that a business has put its name on the advertising space it bought.
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