With Atlético Madrid plumbing new depths of design disaster, David Wangerin traces the history of kit advertising from Kettering Tyres to Spiderman 2 and wonders if club identity has been lost along the way
Look at any football photograph from the mid-Seventies. The glue-pot pitch, the plain white ball and the wild sideburns of some of the players certainly call to mind an almost primitive era, as does the enormous terrace of fans crammed into the background. Yet one anachronism in particular reveals just how the visual elements of British football have changed: the remarkable austerity of the playing strips. There are no manufacturer trademarks and no league logos or appeals for fair play on the sleeves. Most conspicuously of all, nothing is displayed across the chest. It’s undeniably an outdated image, yet one that happily draws the eye closer to the tiny club crest, instead of toward some gargantuan commercial message. An age of marketing innocence, some will bewail, but one certainly to be admired for its aesthetic appeal, to say nothing of its integrity.