Why there is more to soccer jerseys today than mere colours, fabrics and tribalism

Irish Times

6 days ago

Joey D'Urso is showing me football jerseys, lifting them up to the screen from his sunny London apartment. Among them are Venezia, Aston Villa and Schalke. To the uninitiated, his haul might seem excessive. Yet, these shirts have been but a fraction of those D'Urso has collated over the past five years.
D'Urso is senior data journalist at The Times of London, but he previously worked as a political correspondent for the BBC and an investigations writer for The Athletic. He regularly worked on stories about how Asian gambling companies came to dominate the
Premier League
,
Saudi Arabia's
growing influence on sport in general, and the nature of how jersey sponsors are chosen to represent more than modified trims, polyester collars and the colours that will go on to trace a young person's life.
That led to him writing More than a Shirt: How Football Shirts Explain Global Politics, Money and Power, a new investigative book set on tracing the lines between the seemingly innocuous colour combinations and a nation's fiscal struggles, social values and political ideologies as geopolitical issues seep into every aspect of the beautiful game. Partly, the task was personal.
'It's such a cliche,' D'Urso says, 'But it's so much more than football [to me]. It's like the North Star in my life. And I think that's true for so many people. Like, my family have all moved houses, relatives have died, all those sorts of things ... but I will always have one physical place that will be the same as when I went for the first time when I was four. And that's my community.'
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For most of football's history, the idea of a non-partisan recognition would have been beyond belief. From its earliest days, the game was a tribal affair, defined by who is in and, more importantly, who is out. In the modern era, D'Urso argues, the cultural currency of jerseys has given credence to a universality, allowing us, in no small way, to think about one singular idea in a world divided.
'Culture is entirely fragmented at the minute,' he says. 'If you see, say, a great TV programme, there are so many streaming platforms now that chances are your friend isn't subscribed to the same thing. Same with music, art ... [but] football runs counter to that.'
Joey D'Urso: 'I wasn't expecting to see a football shirt with a Pablo Escobar protege on the back'
Yet, with this, the possibility for infiltration runs deep. With 3.5 billion fans worldwide and a vintage jerseys market booming, the ability to connect millions of fans with a positive idea of totalitarianism or climate change has never been easier.
'This Schalke jersey has Gazprom across the front, which is a Russian gas company, and it kind of tells the story of how
Russia
, essentially, bought off Germany through cheap gas,' D'Urso says.
'That manifested itself in Germany basically being soft on Russia compared to other European countries. Then, when Russia invaded
Ukraine
in 2022, this all imploded spectacularly.
Lionel Messi, right. of Barcelona celebrates with Cesc Fabregas after scoring against AC Milan in the Champions League in 2012. Photograph: Manuel Queimadelos Alonso/Getty
'In Germany today, there are people with this shirt with a blue sticker over it, because they're embarrassed to be wearing something that's deeply linked to the invasion of Ukraine.'
In Medellín, Colombia, the methods were more subtle.
'An old kit from Envigado FC features a little silhouette of a man on the back,' D'Urso says with a smile. 'That man was a drug warlord whose son, the owner of the club, ordered him to be on it to honour his father. The club was later sanctioned by the American government for big-time organised crime, resulting in the club not being allowed to have any sponsors for years. And that club is where James Rodriguez, top scorer at 2014 World Cup, got his start. But yeah ... I wasn't expecting to see a football shirt with a
Pablo Escobar
protege on the back.'
Even clubs that seemed untouchable weren't immune to political agendas. 'Barcelona at one stage didn't have a sponsor,' he says. 'And then suddenly they had Unicef, and they actually paid
Unicef
. And this was worn by the best football team of all time: Messi, Iniesta, Guardiola.
In his book, D'Urso urges readers to look at the examples he shares to change the way we might see the world
'But then, when
Qatar
was awarded the World Cup in 2010, Barcelona suddenly had Qatar Foundation and Qatar Airways on their shirt. In that way, sponsors in particular and shirts in general, kind of have the ability to warn you of the future. From lofty ideals to selling out to a Middle Eastern oil state.'
These globalising impulses have undoubtedly shaped all sport, not just soccer. However, what brings it closer to home for Irish fans is the Borders chapter, framed around
Rangers FC
and Club Deportivo Palestino.
'Football is often the embodiment of borders,' D'Urso says. 'And, weirdly, from what I understand, it's that the better the politics become [of a place], the more toxic the football is. Club Deportivo Palestino, in Santiago, has a huge Palestinian diaspora, and they recently had green and white in their kit because they have a kind of link with the fan base of
Celtic
. It's people expressing their identity. And, to me, it's better that people do that through football than through like, violence in the streets.'
Inevitably, kits will continue to fascinate for some time – perhaps as the single unifying act of an unstable sport in an unstable world.
As a tribalist among the like-minded, D'Urso urges 3.5 billion of his closest friends to take the 22 examples he shares in the book to change the way one might see the world. 'Every shirt tells a different story,' he says, with a smile. 'With this book, I'd like to give people the tools to find out those stories for themselves.'
More than a Shirt: How Football Shirts Explain Global Politics, Money and Power by Joey D'Urso is published by Seven Dials and is available in bookshops