Colours promote a sense of tribal identity – and a football strip enables fans to differentiate teams from the back of the stands. But a football team’s colour plays an integral part in the club’s identity, too: mess with it, and there could be trouble.
Until 1857, when the Sheffield rules were introduced to the game, football players rocked up in any kit they had to hand. Many played cricket in the summer and wore the same outfit on the pitch. The Sheffield rules stipulated that players of the same team should wear the same colour, and a tradition was born.
Once the idea of playing in team colours was established, many football clubs chose their strips for random reasons. Arsenal, for instance, only settled on red after receiving a donation of red strips from Nottingham Forest – who had initially taken the colour themselves in honour of the Italian freedom fighter and statesman, Giuseppe Garibaldi. And no one even knows why Newcastle United chose black and white stripes in 1894, although there are myriad theories ranging from the arcane (that the club adopted the colours to honour a local Dutch priest, who was among their most passionate supporters), to the mundane (they were looking for a kit to counteract the colour clashes that were happening in the second division at the time).
Other clubs did adopt a colour with special significance. Liverpool started out in a blue and white kit, but switched to red in 1896, a colour associated with Liverpool city. West Ham play in claret and sky blue in tribute to the house colours of Thames Ironworks.
Whatever historic reasons, or lack thereof, a club had for choosing its kit, once fans become attached to a colour, the manager or owner changes it at his or her peril. In 2012, Cardiff City owner Vincent Tan rocked the football world by changing the colour of “the Bluebirds” to red. The change was made because the Malaysian businessman believed that red would bring good fortune, but the rebrand resulted in a fan backlash – and Cardiff slipped to 12th place in the Championship. During a meeting in January 2015, called after swathes of supporters threatened not to renew their season ticket, Cardiff fans voted unanimously to switch back to blue with immediate effect.
Tan was accused of putting superstition ahead of the team’s best interests, but he’s not the only manager to link performance with the colour of a strip. During the ‘95-‘96 season, then Manchester United manager, Alex Ferguson, made his team change out of their infamous (and short-lived) grey away kit during a desperate defeat at the hands of Southampton. Ferguson claimed that the kit was making it hard for the players to see each other, but the change made little difference as the final score was 3-1 to Southampton.
National football teams are no strangers to colour controversy, either. During the Euro ’96 tournament, fans were outraged when England’s “indigo” (aka grey) away shirt was revealed. The much-reviled strip was only worn once in the tournament – during the heartbreaking semi-final defeat to Germany. Many England fans still clamour for red shirts to be worn in competitive play, longing to replicate the luck that the national side enjoyed during the 1966 world cup triumph, whilst wearing its iconic scarlet strip.
It doesn’t seem to matter whether a colour was chosen at random or for some symbolic reason; once a team’s hue becomes ingrained within its identity, a colour change becomes unthinkable. You can tweak the crest or change the sponsor, and it might cause a few ripples, but try and change the colour and the penalty could be severe, whether luck is on your side or not.
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