How football kits changed

The first football kits had little in common with today’s light, close-fitting shirts. Over 150 years, kits changed with new materials, new rules and new ideas about how a team should look. Move through the decades with your own club’s colours:

Why teams wear colours at all

In the earliest days, players sometimes simply wore caps or sashes to show which side they were on. As the game grew, clubs chose fixed colours so players and spectators could tell the teams apart – and those colours quickly became part of a club’s identity.

Away kits

When two teams’ colours are too similar, one has to change. That is the reason for away kits – and for goalkeepers wearing colours different from everyone else on the pitch.