David Beckham Will Wear 23 at LA Galaxy

There's been no official announcement yet, but it looks like David Beckham will wear #23 on the LA Galaxy. I was perusing through their team shop and noticed that they are already selling a t-shirt with "BECKHAM 23" on it. I must say that the new LA kits are classy and I'm glad that adidas didn't use that horrible squiggly template.

Digging in the Vaults: Atletic Bilbao Centenary Shirt

This little number is the Athletic Bilbao centenary shirt from 1998. I really like this shirt, I know it's really loud, but I don't really care. Bilbao's Basque-only policy is pretty admirable and they are one of only 3 clubs in Spanish football (the others being Real Madrid and Barcelona) that have never been relegated (that is in jeopardy at the moment). Perhaps best of all, they are one of a few clubs that don't wear any ads on their jersey. I hope they stay in the Primera Liga so that the no-ads policy can continue. I'm sure that if the club loses the revenue of not being in the top flight, they might compensate by getting a sponsor for their shirt.

The jersey is made by Kappa, whose male/female logo is pretty cool. Their logo is sewn on the right chest as well as running up and down the sleeves. The shirt is also a departure from the usual Bilbao home shirt, which has red and white vertical stripes. There is a huge dragon-like logo on the front of the shirt, and the back looks like the the back of the dragon if you look at it from the right angle. On the back of the shirt is the name and number of Bilbao stalwart Joseba Etxeberria. To top it off there's a special logo commemorating the centenary on the collar placket. This article says that Bilbao also had a second Centenary shirt in 2004, which looked like this. Not sure how they can have two centenaries but I have to say that second one is pretty hideous.

Catalan Controversy

There was an interesting football kit related incident in last week's international friendly between Spain and Latvia. It seems that two players on Spain's team, Xavi and Carles Puyol, turned the top of their socks inside to hide the trim which is the color of the Spanish national flag. Xavi (#8) and Puyol (#5) are both from Catalonia, which is fiercely proud of being an "Autonomous community" within Spain. In this article, Xavi says that the suggestion that he and Puyol did this deliberately as a show of Catalan unity is to start a "ridiculous and malicious debate(s)." The photo from the match above shows that this has to be more than a coincidence. I personally dig it, and if Catalonia really is autonomous , UEFA should let their national team, which already plays friendlies, to play full internationals. It would be interesting to see how an all-Catalan team would do on the international scene.

This is Rumored to Be...

...The much-anticipated new LA Galaxy shirts. The image circulating on the web seems to be legit enough, if not it's a very good fake. The logo is another matter entirely as it does look somewhat amateurish. So who knows, we will just have to wait and see how this plays out. I wonder if Becks has any imput?

Preview of Premiership's New Names & Numbers

It looks like England's Premier League will launch their new name & number system on May 15th. I found this neat graphic illustrating the change, which I definitely think is a huge step forward. The new numbers are a lot more sleek than the previous version. The change also addresses one big problem with the old font, which was that the 1 and the 7 looked very similar. Kudos to England, I think these numbers look so good, I'm willing to overlook for the time being that England doesn't have an "open" shirt number policy. I'm strongly in favor of teams being able to choose their own fonts, but I also believe there needs to be some regulations and oversight so the disaster that Sevilla FC has been this season can be avoided at all costs.

Ajax Switch Things Up

On April 1st Ajax Amsterdam in a match against Heracles wore a special one-off kit. I noticed it on Tuesday when I was watching eredivisie highlights on Fox Soccer Channel. The kit is identical to the one they usually wear in the Dutch league save for the advertising on the shirt. For God knows how long Ajax have been sponsored by Dutch bank ABN-AMRO. In fact the only other sponsor I could think of Ajax having was TDK way back.

I couldn't make out what the advertising said on the highlights so I did a little digging and found out it was a one-off shirt to introduce ABN-AMRO's new mortgage branch Florius. The whole story can be found here. Also mentioned in that piece is that Ajax have done this before in 2003, which I didn't know about. There's not much to say about the change since it's not really a major one. The most important thing is that they preserved the tradition of aligning the lettering on the Ajax shirt vertically. Tradition is good.

Another interesting note from Holland is that Feyenoord has introduced their new kits for the 2007/08 season. Not much of a change on the home, but the new away kit is quite new and fresh.

MLS Gets With The Program

On Friday, Real Salt Lake (RSL) became the first MLS club to announce a front-of the-shirt sponsor (something called Xango). Technically, the New York Red Bulls were the first to do this last season, but their case is a little different because the entire team was purchased by the company that owns Red Bull and re-named ( A quick aside on Red Bulls, they need to tone down the size of that ad, that thing is way too big). RSL was followed by LA Galaxy and today by Toronto FC, who released their first ever kit sponsored by BMO Bank. I'm sure there are soccer fans here in the States and Canada that are up in arms about this development. We (and when I say we I mean me) here at footballkitblog hold a different, more pragmatic view. I believe this is a positive development for American soccer on its road to legitimacy.

Since its inception in 1996, MLS clubs have worn advertising on the back of the jersey, with the team name usually on the front. Of course, the rest of the football/soccer world wears ads on the front of the jersey among other places. This difference along with some others (the "breakaway" tie-breakers, the loud colors and cartoonish nature of most of the jerseys and logos, the huge, empty stadiums) differentiated the American game, and frankly, we were a laughingstock. Recently MLS has made strides towards putting out a better product, and putting ads on the front of the shirts is another step in the right direction. The advertising on the shirt boat has sailed, kids. Now our clubs will look like real football teams.

As far as the new Toronto shirt is concerned, I think the colors are pretty nice and the ad for BMO is done tastefully enough, and at least adidas used the least unattractive or their latest crappy templates. More on how adidas is destroying the game soon to come. I'm curious to see what LA Galaxy is going to do, they are due to release a complete re-design of their look soon. I hear that either black or navy blue will be used as one of the team colors. Anything is better than the puke-a-thon they've been wearing.