Damn right. Why should clubs change their away kit colours just to suit my request or footballing needs. No way. Instead - they'll just change them dramatically every two years purely on commercial grounds......!
If you're suggesting that the colour of away kits is treated as sacred and as non-changeable as home kits, then you really musn't watch much football DM...
Take Newcastle - the English club I'm most familiar with. They've recently played in away shirts that were white, green, grey, Barcelona-style, and last year blue and scarlet colour. Care to tell me what Newcastle United's official away colour's are therefore supposed to be.......?
An that's without getting onto Manchester United and their multi-colour dreamkits.....
I can only speak for Man Utd. I presume there are lots of other clubs with tradition.
So you're telling me that Man U's away colours are sacred and never change.....?
Even with only a passing interest in English football, I can recall numerous different United away colours : white, blue/white, grey, black.....
So what colour exactly is their 'traditional' away kit colour ?
Are away kits around 90 years?
Didn't Utd win European cup in blue?
54,321 sold - wws will never die - ***
---
New blog if anyone's interested - http://loihistory.wordpress.com/
LOI section on balls.ie - http://balls.ie/league-of-ireland/
****ers trying to rip off fans as early as 1968
(BTW the away kits thing was genuine, I had no idea)
54,321 sold - wws will never die - ***
---
New blog if anyone's interested - http://loihistory.wordpress.com/
LOI section on balls.ie - http://balls.ie/league-of-ireland/
The 90 years thing is irrelevant, as the rampant commercialisation of football is really only about 20 years old. Less if you date it to the start of the Premiership breakaway.
When was the first time they had a non-white away kit ? Are you ciounting kits that had some white in them as well - e.g. that weird blue and white triangles thing during the Sharp days.
Bottom line is - if Man U were the guardians of footballing tradition that you suggest they are, they wouldn't have fcuked with their away colours full stop. How many times have they changed their home colours in the period since they first changed their away kit ?
Well to quote an example from closer to home shirt sales do not equate necessarily with bums on seat.
The now deceased Dublin City FC sold more shirts in 2005 than any other ELOI club, tourists bought their shirts in droves, but very few of those shirt sales transferred into bums on seats hence part of the reason for the clubs nosedive. A Peruvian club team has had an enormous increase in their shirt sales in the UK in recent seasons... purely for comic value... their name DEPORTIVO WANKA.
Many people who go to games don't buy 3-4 different kit shirts of their favourite team. In this country thousands by shirts of Premiershi* teams and never go to a game either over there or here.
But the sales do contribute to the overall revenue when the numbers involved are large enough as in the case of ManURe where one season they made enough profit from shirt and other ancillary sales to buy Rio Ferdinand.
p.s. Who the hell is Abromavich or Ambromavich? The man's name is Roman Abramovich.
Last edited by CollegeTillIDie; 23/06/2007 at 10:17 AM.
That claim was never qualified though CTID. I'm fairly sure it was an assumption more than anything else - I doubt Seery/Carrolls actually knew how many shirts Cork, Derry, Bohs etc had sold when he made the claim that they'd sold the most.
That's not to say he mightened have been correct - but I would still be sceptical about what was an unqualified claim.
Also - saying tourists bought the Dublin City shirt "in droves" would be over-egging it a bit. I never saw any sold the times I was mooching around in Carrolls, and I doubt my vists were particularly unrepresentative breaks in the storming of Carolls by the Dublin City-craving tourist hordes...
Bookmarks