🚀 Check out this insightful post from BBC Sport 📖
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“First and foremost, the easiest way for a kit to become iconic is for the team to be successful in it,” podcast host and football historian Peter Kenny-Jones tells BBC Sport.
England suffered a famous defeat by West Germany on penalties in the 1990 World Cup semi-final in Italy, but after decades of poor performance at major tournaments, Bobby Robson’s side showed the skill, determination and strength of character that fans demanded.
Jones added: “Even though England didn’t win that tournament, they came home to watch an open-top bus show and the whole country gathered around them.”
“Paul Gascoigne became a national hero. Special moments like him crying and Gary Lineker asking the bench to have a say.”
Not only was there an increase in sales of England shirts during and after the Coppa Italia 90, but the shirt remains a fan favorite to this day.
However, it wasn’t just the Three Lions shirt from that tournament that captured the imagination.
Football fans Doug Burton and Matthew Dale, who met while studying at university, have turned the sale of vintage football shirts into a business empire worth almost £40 million.
The group that started it all? The West Germany home shirt worn in that World Cup. “I think it cost £20 in a charity shop in the student area of Manchester,” Burton says. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it.”
Italia 90 was the first major football tournament Burton had watched on television, and it was the initial difficulty in tracking down this particular shirt, worn by the likes of Rudi Völler and Lothar Matthäus, that led him to assume other fans had faced similar problems when searching for an old shirt.
The idea of classic football shirts was born. The company started with a spare bedroom, and the first few shirts were purchased using Burton and Dell student loans.
“My goal was to collect every group from Italia 90,” he said. “But the problem is that they only made half of them that you can buy in the store. So you have to search, contact previous players and go down wormholes to find them. I have equipped most of them, but I am missing four.
He added: “So I need the Cameroon 1990 finals away from home, the United Arab Emirates at home, Uruguay at home, and South Korea at home. Then I will have the full package.”
Burton has a personal collection of around 6,700 match-worn shirts, while his company’s warehouse includes one million football shirts.
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