Saw this book in Waterstones yesterday and it looks excellent.
Read the blurb here... and if you haven't ordered a copy by the time you've finished, or are at least intrigued by the premise I'd be surprised...
Football is the world’s most popular sport, and the shirts worn by teams and their supporters are its greatest means of cultural expression. Every year clubs launch new kits with increasingly extravagant marketing campaigns and convoluted explanations of how their designs reflect their history and local community. But football shirts are much more than just a symbol of which club we support. A seemingly innocuous combination of colours, sponsor logos and materials can all reflect the social values, financial struggles and political ideologies of the day, as geopolitical issues increasingly seep into every aspect of the game.
Investigative journalist Joey D’Urso has travelled across the globe, combining on-the-ground reporting with unparalleled analysis to collate a list of the twenty-two football shirts that best explain the modern world. More Than A Shirt will take fans on a journey from Birmingham to Belgrade and onto Medellin and Milan, outlining how we can see the war in Ukraine in Schalke’s shirt or China’s foreign policy in West Bromwich Albion’s; how the shirts of state-owned clubs are used for sportswashing; and why the French national kit embodies worldwide migration patterns.
D’Urso said: ‘Football is the closest thing we have to a universal global cultural movement in an age when TV and music is fragmented across streaming services and customised playlists. It is the biggest thing in the world and it just keeps getting bigger. This book is about how football shirts can be a tool to better understand the world we live in, because every shirt tells a deeper story. This journey has taken me all over the world and I am so excited for people to read it and for them to tell me the stories behind their own favourite shirts.’
Read the blurb here... and if you haven't ordered a copy by the time you've finished, or are at least intrigued by the premise I'd be surprised...
Football is the world’s most popular sport, and the shirts worn by teams and their supporters are its greatest means of cultural expression. Every year clubs launch new kits with increasingly extravagant marketing campaigns and convoluted explanations of how their designs reflect their history and local community. But football shirts are much more than just a symbol of which club we support. A seemingly innocuous combination of colours, sponsor logos and materials can all reflect the social values, financial struggles and political ideologies of the day, as geopolitical issues increasingly seep into every aspect of the game.
Investigative journalist Joey D’Urso has travelled across the globe, combining on-the-ground reporting with unparalleled analysis to collate a list of the twenty-two football shirts that best explain the modern world. More Than A Shirt will take fans on a journey from Birmingham to Belgrade and onto Medellin and Milan, outlining how we can see the war in Ukraine in Schalke’s shirt or China’s foreign policy in West Bromwich Albion’s; how the shirts of state-owned clubs are used for sportswashing; and why the French national kit embodies worldwide migration patterns.
D’Urso said: ‘Football is the closest thing we have to a universal global cultural movement in an age when TV and music is fragmented across streaming services and customised playlists. It is the biggest thing in the world and it just keeps getting bigger. This book is about how football shirts can be a tool to better understand the world we live in, because every shirt tells a deeper story. This journey has taken me all over the world and I am so excited for people to read it and for them to tell me the stories behind their own favourite shirts.’
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