There is a curious dichotomy about modern football.

The sport is fundamentally anchored around newness – the new season brings renewed hope, new signings decked in brand new kits and new grounds to visit.

And yet, nowhere is nostalgia more dominant than in the beautiful game.

Tony Soprano may have argued that ‘Remember when, is the lowest form of conversation’ but reminiscing is a quintessential facet of being a football fan. And vintage shirts represent a perfect microcosm of this wave of sentimentality. 

Your neighbour going for a run wearing a Manchester United shirt from the Eric Cantona days, the bloke at the gym in an immaculate AC Milan top sponsored by Mediolanum and the man queuing for a pint at a festival with that Fiorentina Fila kit.

Vintage football shirts are near-ubiquitous, just as bucket hats and Adidas Gazelles were at Oasis gigs across the country this summer. 

“People grow up and they get on with their lives and they kind of get into their thirties and forties and they get nostalgia for their youth,” explains kit collector John Blair.

“And for a lot of people, football is a big part of that. And so that’s when the demand side kicks in, people wanting to create a physical reminder of that period. 

“They go out and they buy the shirts. Now, the nostalgia comes from seeing moments. 

“So it’s seeing goals, it’s seeing players, it’s tournaments. It triggers and almost instantly takes you back to that moment, who you were with, what you were doing. 

“And so it’s not just a football shirt, it’s not just the design, it’s that kind of feeling and the emotion that comes with it as well.”

A football enthusiast who has collected more than 500 shirts for over three decades, Blair’s debut book, A Culture of Kits: The Definitive Guide to Classic Shirt Collecting was nominated for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 2024.

His second book, Football Kit Italia, hit the shelves in August. It covers that fascinating decade of Italian football from 1992-2002.

There is nothing that comes close to inspiring as much nostalgia as 1990s Serie A, when calcio became a cultural phenomenon in the UK thanks to Football Italia.

The show made its debut on Channel 4 at the beginning of the 1992-93 season, just months after Paul Gascoigne had swapped Tottenham for Lazio. 

On Saturday mornings, James Richardson hosted the Gazzetta show as he sipped a cappuccino in a piazza while reading the world’s most famous pink sheet.

By Sunday afternoon it was time for the main event, as the likes of Roberto Baggio, George Weah and Gabriel Batistuta turned out in stadiums that had hosted the World Cup just two years earlier.

“I really wanted to write something that celebrated that era, the impact on football, but also culture and TV more broadly, because I did feel it kind of ushered in a new style of approach to television programming around football,” Blair explains.

There was something else that Serie A was world class at in the 1990s: kits.

Think of Parma’s blue and yellow Umbro number with laces on the collar, Fiorentina’s shirt sponsored by 7-Up or their stunning Fila and Nintendo efforts. Or Roma decked out in Diadora and Juventus’ stunning away strip with a large yellow star on the shoulder.

And what of Inter Milan’s grey and blue hoops with the golden Pirelli sponsor and AC Milan’s white, red and black Lotto away kit?

Serie A not only had the best teams in the world, it had the most glamorous. 

“You’ve got to remember the context of the time,” says Blair, who counts the Kappa-manufactured Palermo and Juventus kits among his favourites. “So coming out of the 1970s and the 1980s, the shirts were fairly uniform. There wasn’t really an expressive design. 

“The sponsorship wasn’t really as prominent as it became in the 1990s, which ushered in this new period of design of different features. I think the designs in Italy in the 1990s are far superior to those in the English game at the time.”

So what makes a shirt a classic? Is it the players wearing it, the design or something else?

“The design plays a big part,” says Blair. “The size of the following matters too. The number of people that are watching those moments and watching those games creates a certain demand. 

“And there’s an element of culture playing into it, seismic moments that stick with fans. Let’s say Eric Cantona’s kung-fu kick, the Zinedine Zidane headbutt in the World Cup final. As far as Serie A goes, think of Alvaro Recoba’s Inter Milan debut.

“It was also Ronaldo’s debut, but Recoba stepped in and kind of stole the show [he scored twice as Inter came from behind to beat Brescia at the San Siro].

“Those kinds of kits obviously take on much higher status amongst collectors and fans because of the moments that are attached to them.”

And it’s not just fans who reminisce. The clubs, with their marketing hats on, do too.

In 2019 Arsenal released a shirt inspired by the famous bruised banana away kit they wore between 1991 and 1993. Manchester United’s current black kit is a nod to more glorious days and the shirt Cantona wore when he jumped feet-first into the crowd at Selhurst Park.

Across town, Manchester City re-released the black and yellow away kit that was a staple of their Maine Road days in the mid 1990s, while Liverpool have already wheeled out two fresher iterations of the iconic grey kit they wore in the late 1980s.

Inter Milan have twice released a kit inspired by the grey hoops they wore when they won the UEFA Cup in 1998 while Adidas have rolled back the years with some gorgeous retro kits for Roma.

Even Torino have tried to rekindle a flame, with the maroon chevrons on their away kit last season near-identical to those on the top when they won the Coppa Italia in 1993, their last trophy.

But can you have too much of a good thing?

“It’s always a fine line,” says Blair. “When they do it right, like that Roma shirt or the Napoli shirt, it works really well and people love it. 

“But there is a saturation and I think it’s more on the one-off shirts, the fourth shirt, the European shirts. That’s where people get fatigued with it.” 

Social media has changed the way we consume football and has developed into a prominent marketing tool for clubs.

“If you think of some of the fashion shirts that have come out, the collaborations between clubs and designers, we see that quite prominently in Italy,” Blair says. 

“The likes of Venezia and others have really capitalised on the social media exposure these kits give them in terms of leaning into the design.” 

But social media has also revolutionised the vintage scene by connecting collectors and serving as an invaluable source of information.. 

“The social media aspect is really interesting,” Blair says. “Writing the book, I’m remembering things and I’m going back and researching it. So without social media, you might not see those little nuggets of one-off kits or special occasion shirts that existed at the time.”

Visually stunning as it is, Football Kits Italia is far more than a collection of beautiful tops, as Blair digs deep into the manufacturers.

From the heavyweights of the industry such as Lotto and Adidas – Nike only arrived in Serie A in 1997 – to more obscure brands such ABM, whose kits were worn by Torino and Piacenza, among others. 

“The one thing I like about Serie A is just the divergence of manufacturers,” says Blair. “Some of the big leagues you fall into a pattern with Nike, Adidas and Puma, whereas I think things are different in Italy.

“Macron are doing some amazing stuff. Kappa and the Genoa shirts, Adidas with the white Roma release this season – that is another stunning shirt. 

“And then all these smaller clubs, like Como, Venezia… they’re all leaning into it.”

Blair has a collection worth between £75,000 and £100,000 and features the shirts of all 33 teams that played in Serie A from 1992 until 2002.

The search, however, never really stops.

“The shirts that are worn in one-off games and weren’t sold commercially are extremely rare,” he explains. “The one that I would love to get is the Fiorentina 1998-99 red shirt. There’s that iconic picture of [Gabriel] Batistuta and [Juan Sebastian] Veron shaking hands pre-game. 

“Match-worn shirts are something that’s kind of evocative as well and [Gianluca] Vialli’s shirt from the Champions League win for Juventus in 1996 would be a big one.

“It would be incredible to get hold of a shirt like that, just given its cultural prominence and what he did during his career, particularly finally getting his hands on the Champions League as captain.”