With body and soul

FC Bayern Munich has almost always trailed Borussia Dortmund, and has done so for years. Bayer Leverkusen, Eintracht Frankfurt, and Werder Bremen follow a distant second. Occasionally, a single player pulls it off, but the Black and Yellows are simply more popular overall. However, there are fewer of them, which automatically makes them more in demand.

At least on the international vintage market, the ranking looks the way BVB fans would like it to. An original jersey from the 1996/1997 season, for example, when Riedle, Möller, and Chapuisat won the Champions League 3-1 against Juventus Turin, costs up to 400 euros. The minimalist red Bayern jersey with the Commodore logo and the number 4 on the back from 1984 to 1989 sells for a maximum of 300 euros. Given such prices, fans of both camps will probably now be annoyed that they didn't keep their jerseys from back then.

Old football shirts used to be something only for hardcore fans, perhaps for the club museum. Teenagers who had watched an entire season or a special match of their team in them didn't part with their keepsake. But they were rarely worn again. The new, no matter how well-designed, defined the zeitgeist. Shirts from past seasons lay in drawers for years or eventually ended up in used clothing collections. Treasures that now feed an entire industry.

Classic Football Shirts, Stunner, Vintage Football Shirts, Cult Kits, Classic Soccer Jerseys, Kitlaunch – there are now more than a dozen suppliers of vintage football shirts. They are based in London, Manchester, Wales, Brussels, or Barcelona, ​​but ship worldwide via their online shops and gather a growing fan base. Football enthusiasts and collectors looking for a specific design from the past, but also, increasingly, fashion enthusiasts who simply enjoy the look.

Vintage clothing has been experiencing a boom for some time now. Pre-owned items are no longer simply yesterday's news; in the surplus of new collections, they suddenly appear more individual, not to mention more sustainable. Mixing old with new has long since become a matter of course, especially among younger generations. The same development can now be observed with jerseys, which are no longer just worn in the stadium but like normal T-shirts in everyday life. Children still want to own their team's current season jersey. But even older teenagers and young adults are increasingly seeking out vintage jerseys. Because they suddenly seem cool, and ideally because they still combine an iconic design and a good story from glory days. Neymar Jr. may have recently had a spectacular career failure, but the jerseys from his early days at Brazilian club Santos are still highly sought after. Or this Arsenal away jersey from 1991 to 1993 with its yellow-green spikes, which fans called the "damaged banana" back then. Arsenal didn't win any prizes with it, but the design is so famous that collectors are willing to pay 500 euros for it.

"The holy grail is, of course, the pale orange Holland shirt they wore to win the Euros in 1988. You can ask up to 1,000 euros for that," says Greg Lee of Vintage Football Shirts in Wrexham, one of the first online shops for vintage shirts, which opened in 2010. "Or Germany 1990 – but the away shirt in green!" He and his partner were passionate collectors themselves and were always surprised that there were no shops selling them. "Sometimes you'd get lucky at a flea market or through friends of friends, and then at least there was eBay," says the Welshman. Their business is still growing year after year, with no sign of a slowdown. "But it's becoming increasingly difficult and expensive to get hold of good shirts because the competition is much greater and, unfortunately, private sellers now also know what they can charge," says Lee. The largest retailer, Classic Football Shirts, with stores in London and Manchester, now employs around 190 people and operates pop-up stores from New York to Berlin. Until recently, the temporary V-Store in Munich sold a large selection of vintage sportswear alongside other secondhand clothing.

"At the beginning of the year, we were particularly in demand for old Liverpool jerseys because they had an impressively good season," explains Lee. "Everything that came in sold out immediately." Manchester United with David Beckham from the 1990s is more mainstream, but of course a "solid choice." "These days, anything four years old is considered vintage, but in the future, special collections will be in particular demand because, compared to the other jerseys, only a few were produced," believes Lee. Examples include the Spotify-sponsored Barcelona jerseys featuring bands like Coldplay and the Rolling Stones, or the jersey for the 100th anniversary of the Colombian national football team, which Adidas released last year.

When a trend called "blokecore" went viral on TikTok, even women who otherwise had little interest in football began wearing vintage jerseys. "Bloke" describes a rather plain, masculine, somewhat trashy type of person. A football fan, beer in hand, jeans, sneakers, and a jersey on the weekends, roughly in the league of the Gallagher brothers of Oasis, who frequently performed in Manchester City jerseys in the 1990s. That era is enjoying a permanent fashion revival anyway, not least the baggy cuts of that time are back in fashion. In January 2023, Kim Kardashian, who had never before been seen near a stadium stand, wore an AS Roma jersey from the 1997/98 season. More than two million people subsequently googled the club. Dua Lipa wore her own vintage-inspired merch shirt for the 2024 European Championship, Balenciaga released a designer jersey, and Balmain collaborated with Real Madrid—jerseys have become a fashion accessory.

The general retro wave has also reached the new designs. Germany's 2018 jersey was already a homage to 1990, the puristic white jersey from the last European Championship was intended to recall the aesthetics of 2006, and the current jersey for the DFB's 125th anniversary is based on the retro design from 1974. Adidas even released an entire collection for the Spanish national team in the 1996 style, including an extra-wide tracksuit jacket. The manufacturer's quote: "With this nice retro look, you're celebrating a piece of the Spanish national team's success story." The vintage voodoo actually worked in the end; Spain won the European Championship, and sales were also good. Accordingly, FC Barcelona has been designing its own retro jerseys, as well as blousons and wide-cut tracksuit pants, for a few years now, aimed more at a hipster crowd than at the stadium.

For real fans, this only drives them even more nostalgic. "Before, we wore the same jersey for several seasons; now there are sometimes four or five different ones per season," says the salesperson at Kitlaunch in Barcelona. The market is so flooded that many fans prefer to seek out something special, from the time before jerseys became mass-produced. Of course, there's also a nostalgia for the "good old days of football," when there wasn't so much money at stake and real stars were on the pitch. Like Eric Cantona or Franz Beckenbauer, jerseys with their names are always in demand. But designs were also more diverse back then, because Nike and Adidas didn't yet dominate everything, and Reebok, Umbro, Lotto, and Kappa were also among the suppliers. "Above all, the materials were of higher quality," says the Catalan. He strokes Steven Gerrard's number 8 on a Liverpool jersey from 2009. "That's not plastic, that's felt!"

He sees the store, which opened last year, almost as a museum, says the salesperson. Every day, he meets people here who, with tears in their eyes, touch a jersey, recalling a particular move by a footballer. "The jersey advertising alone tells a piece of cultural history," he enthuses. Boca Juniors used to have Pepsi as a sponsor, Bayern Munich used Commodore, and Napoli played with Mars on their chests. Today, only Qatari airlines or streaming services like Spotify can afford the gigantic sums.

Jerseys at Kitlaunch cost around €89, depending on condition, vintage, and glory, with rare examples sometimes going for up to €250. A few blocks away, however, Coolligan and Hand of God are selling their shirts for €49 to €79 – because they're replicas, i.e., re-produced fakes or pseudo-vintage designs, not originals. The internet is also now full of freshly produced Beckham, Zidane, and Matthäus jerseys. You have to be well-versed to know which jerseys are truly original.

One of the most famous vintage jersey shops, Stunner in Manchester, had to close a few months ago. Not because business was bad – quite the opposite. Ukrainians Polina Vynohradova and Serge Shcherbyna are something of an influencer couple in the scene. Media around the world reported on them because their shop was originally in Kyiv and they only escaped the war by chance. "The day before the attacks, we flew to Brussels to work for another jersey dealer," Shcherbyna explains. After a roundabout route, they later ended up in Manchester and opened a new shop there, with great success. Polina Vynohradova may not know much about football, but she is very knowledgeable about styling. She had long known how best to combine and stage all the old jerseys from Serge Shcherbyna's collection. Each model practically got their own fashion shoot. "But the lease was up at the end of the year," Shcherbyna explains. Sales continue online, but before they reach their nearest store, they want to see what else can be done with the retro enthusiasm for football. "The more professional and digital the sport becomes, the greater the longing for the beautiful game of the past," believes Polina Vynohradova.

They've always photographed their jerseys using analogue technology because it suited their aesthetic better. Recently, they started taking their cameras to football stadiums and taking photos for the Stunner Instagram account. Now, clubs and brands are inviting them to produce the same kind of footage for their channels. Vynohradova and Shcherbyna are just 28 and 30 years old, respectively. But many members of the younger generation feel the same way: They feel nostalgic for a time they didn't experience themselves, but which is firmly anchored in the collective memory. Vintage jerseys were just the beginning, the two believe – the football of yesterday will become even more significant.

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