One of the most unusual yet fun collaborations in my writing career unexpectedly came up many years ago from a France-based online fanzine mixing art, music and culture.
The zine featured different reviews of matches from the European Football Championships written by people who were living away from their home country.
At the time I was still a student and I mainly wrote about music and literature, so this came as a new opportunity to focus on a different topic and also explore a bit issues of nationalism and internationalism.
With hindsight I must admit I never thought I would have enjoyed it as much as I did: it was refreshing to be able to approach the subject from my position, watching matches at student unions with groups of international friends and supporting each day a different team to make sure everybody in the group was happy and didn't feel homesick.
The 2010 World Cup kicks off today but that writing experience is not my only football related memory at the moment.
I do come from a country – Italy – where football obsession is taken to extreme limits. I remember sitting for a written exam one hot summer afternoon that coincided with a vital game of our "Nazionale".
Every now and then the total silence in which we were immersed was broken by announcements made on the microphone by the lecturers checking that nobody copied, that kept us updated about goals and other relevant actions (I don't think that would have happened in another country…).
I also come from a family in which football obsession meant my dad was away most Sundays, not to watch the matches, but to work as a linesman or referee.
After my father died I put together an album of photographs from his football days, following a chronological order, from the 50s-60s on.
My father started working as a linesman and referee around those years and, later on, he worked off the pitch as a supervisor.
I didn't realise it when I put some order into the photographs I had home, but I sort of indirectly managed to draft a brief history of referee uniforms through this album.
I have somehow explored a little bit the Italian national team uniforms in one of the first posts in this blog, so today I would like to focus on referee/linesmen uniforms and how they changed throughout the years.
There are indeed some interesting connections between the art of tailoring and specific fashion trends and referee/linesmen uniforms.
The earliest pictures I have of my dad show how the first uniforms he wore in the 50s-60s were directly borrowed from tailored menswear.
For the Spring matches referees and linesmen wore in Italy a classic short sleeved shirt (some images actually show my dad as a linesman in short sleeves and the referee wearing an ordinary white shirt with rolled up long sleeves) matched with black shorts and black socks.
A jacket was added on top of the white shirt in Autumn-Winter.
The cut of this garment was rather casual compared to traditional man's jackets.
The cropped jacket gave the referee and linesmen a rather squarish shape. While the linesmen only had one classic chest pocket with the AIA-FIGC (Italian Football Referee Association – Italian Football Federation) logo, the referee's jacket had two pockets, very useful to carry the whistle and cards.
All the jackets featured blue contrast piping on the lapels, a detail I find rather interesting and stylish.
This design remained popular throughout the 60s and until the early 70s, when the jackets turned into casual tops and their buttons were replaced by zips.
Decorum was the rule not only on the pitch but also off: I have photographs of my father outside the hotels where he was staying with his colleagues when refereeing at away matches in which they all looked rather smart, wearing suits matched with dark blue or brown trench coats and leather cases.
Tailors were usually enlisted to make these suits but also the actual uniforms (this is the reason why the cut of the uniforms shown in the pictures posted here seems different from one linesman to the other).
Many things changed in the 70s in Italy also thanks to the expansion of the ready-to-wear market.
This change in society’s style and fashion also had an impact on referee styles: uniforms were not ordered anymore from tailors, but from small sportswear companies that had their own production facilities.
The traditional referee jackets therefore disappeared and functionality became the rule.
Buttons were replaced by a rather unfashionable yet more practical metal zip and the white shirt was eliminated in favour of a rather wide white collar (integrated in the top) that called to mind the style of men’s T-shirts from those years.
A typical example of this style is the uniform my dad wore during the 1976 Italy-Mexico friendly match played in Francavilla (sixth image in this post).
Changes were also applied to the linesmen flags: I have a few of them and, interestingly enough, the oldest ones seem to be made of thick pale yellow natural fabrics, replaced in the 70s by a sort of silky polyester material and a brighter yolk yellow shade.
In the mid-70s and early 80s there was a real boom in sportswear in Italy.
Quite a few companies flourished becoming leaders in the global market and, as a consequence, referees styles kept on mutating faster and faster.
The rather unstylish zippered top was eliminated in favour of a simple black shirt emblazoned with the AIA logo.
Regulations imposed that football team uniforms couldn't have any sponsors or trademarks in Italy, but, ten years ago, this ban was lifted allowing the technical sponsors to do crazy things with footballers' uniforms, while proper fashion designers created the official team suits (the 2010 World Cup suits for the Italian team are currently designed by Dolce & Gabbana).
Referee uniforms weren't spared: most uniforms are nowadays made with technologically advanced or acrylic fibres and vividly bright nuances prevail over the more classic black and white.
For the 2009/10 football season Italian referees wore on the pitch black, neon yellow and bright fuchsia tops (a colour that echoed the pink jersey worn by the cyclists during the Giro d'Italia) with the AIA logo around the neckline.
Nowadays unveiling the new referee shirts or team uniforms for major events such as the Word Cup is a bit like unveiling a fashion collection.
In a way there is also another analogy between fashion and football, the amount of money that rules these worlds.
My father liked the integrity and honesty that football offered and he conceived the rules of the fair game as a sort of lifestyle rather than just as something to apply on the pitch.
I genuinely hope that the matches we will see in the next few weeks will be stylish enough to honour these rules. I'm sure that even the fashion industry would have something to learn from a beautiful football match played following the principles of fair play.
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