Keeping the Flag Flying With Football Kits from All around the World

Keeping the Flag Flying With Football Kits from All around the World

Football, as those World Cup experts never tire of telling us, is a game that knows no boundaries. It transcends divisions of race and class, uniting fans under a common banner the badge and colours of their team. Uniquely, that's a banner they can wear, as football kits: coloured shirts that instantly mark them out as one of the tribe.

With the World Cup in full swing, attention is naturally turning towards national shirts. Sales of national football kits have already been high, with fans scrambling to get their country's latest colours in the weeks leading up to the tournament. Now the thing is properly here, with the first teams to go out or go through recently decided, we'll be seeing those shirts reflect the changing fortunes of the nations they represent. Who's in and who's out is something instantly recognisable from the number of a given team's shirts seen walking around on the street.

Football kits represent a lot more than success, of course to a fan; a football strip is a reminder of passion; of victory; and of failure. There is no English fan who does not remember the colour and style of the strip Paul Gascoigne was wearing when he got booked in the 1990 semi final against Germany. Or the colours of the shirt that "Psycho" Stuart Pearce had on when he missed that fateful penalty. A football shirt, like a flag, is emblematic of the hopes and dreams of a nation. Those hopes and dreams become bound up in its colours; in its badge blurring the identity of the wearer to such an extent that the shirt, the football kits, are sometimes all we see.

That's a powerful thing and evidence of the important place football has in our society. A football shirt is perhaps the only item of clothing that is as likely to be worn by a builder as a banker, a bricklayer as an accountant. Female; male; young; old: the humble football shirt (and it does have such humble beginnings) clothes us all.

Think about this even the national flag doesn't get as much play. Plenty of people wear clothes that refer, in their design, to the cross of St George, or the Union Jack but football kits? They're everywhere. From the kids in the park to mum and dad. The flag flies from cars, from houses even but on our bodies, the only common emblem is that of a team shirt.

It's an emblem that seems to democratise the people who wear it, as though acknowledging allegiance to a national team grants immunity from the normal divisions of wealth and class. That's practically an equality of football, destroying boundaries in the name of a commonly shared ideal. Football kits really are flags, flying on the bodies of fans to create a nation that is more than a nation: more, even, than a state. And if they can really cause businessmen, builders, students, pensioners a whole country to abandon their differences for 90 minutes; to sing; to lose themselves in the pursuit after (and support of) a single idea: then football really is the beautiful game. Football kits are its standards.

POST COMMENT

Great Impact Arise From Football Transfers Football Kit Store - A Good Resource To Collect Football Keepsakes Different Personal Treatment Of Football And Football Jerseys How Many Authentic Football Jerseys You Have In Your Cupboard Mountain West Football Predictions 2010 Understanding Fantasy Football Stats How to Play Fantasy Football League Fantasy Football Ranking Free Fantasy Football League Fantasy Football Strategy Watchful Eyes On Every Side Of Authentic Football Jerseys How Do I Stop the Speed Running Back in Youth Football? Desirable Authneic Football Jerseys Help You Realize Your Dream Of Being A Successful Player