There are many ways to support your favourite sports team, whether it is getting that season ticket, putting that favourite poster up or even getting a tattoo with the team crest (and explaining to your missus that it will wash off in the morning). However perhaps what remains the most popular way of displaying one’s sports team allegiances is through wearable merchandise. One approach to that is the classic team kit, tried and tested, it is likely to be worn to every match after THAT goal or THAT try. However the alternative has increasingly been various more creative interpretations of team insignia or icons, and this is something Nike has done to perfection. They have turned fan merchandise into something cool, vintage and worn outside local pub gatherings.
In their newest take on this their ‘Cooperstown Heritage’ range has brought a bunch of t-shirts that have taken a wide range a teams from Major League Baseball and their most iconic players, transforming them into silhouettes of facial hair, eyewear and caps. Its definitely very Nike and the kind of printed t-shirts that have less association with the teams and more with the design style.
Although the baseball designs are great, I think that if we are on the topic of outrageous haircuts and contentious arrangements of facial hair then football (soccer) should definitely have a shout in the matter. The World Cup has been the stage for much technical brilliance on the pitch, but unfortunately such brilliance hasn’t always translated onto the mops of those involved. So in the spirit of the Cooperstown range, we at Indigo Clothing present a brief selection of our favourites:
Socrates (Brazil) – The captain of Brazil’s 1982 World Cup side, a doctor of medicine and a connoisseur of the best kept ‘fro south of Rio:
Socrates
Ruud Gullit (Netherlands) – Captain of the Euro 1988 Dutch side, a proponent of ‘Total Football’, and dreadlocks to push any Rastafarian for all their money:
Ruud Gullit
Kevin Keegan (England) – England international, Officer of the Order of the British Empire and the poster boy for a generation of perm poodlers:
Kevin Keegan
The above are just a select few top mops that give t-shirt printing a good name in both their simplicity and the nature of the designs. In a way there is so much scope with these kinds of designs that displaying one’s sporting allegiances doesn’t always have to resort to official kit merchandise or some kind of blatant sporting wear. Why not go for a bit of perm poodle endorsement yourself? Watch this space.