From Potato Sacks to Pulisic: The Soccer Shirt as Cultural Currency
Football jerseys are more than just support; they're cultural currency. Does Pulisic's AC Milan jersey sales surge hint at a potential power shift in global football, with America on the rise?
It must feel like Christmas in soccer jersey land, and if there’s one thing you shouldn’t do is take any brand selling soccer jerseys too seriously as a barometer.
That’s because the football shirt itself is the barometer.
Replica shirts weren’t a thing until the 1973/74 season, when Admiral first released a Leeds shirt out into the wild; and that was only for children.
I’d love to say it could only handle one wash before falling apart, but football shirts in the seventies were like wearing a chain mail potato sack. Just putting it on would chafe your nipples so badly that if they were available at a BDSM club they’d have their own safe word.
Grown-ups had to wait until the 1982 World Cup. Even then, you would only wear your club colors and national team. If at all.
Then Italy happened. First, Italia 90. Then in 1992, Football Italia started showing live Serie A games on a Sunday afternoon with all the best footballers in the world who you’d only ever seen in major international championships.
And (a) football subculture was born.
English football had just finished a five year ban from Europe, and it wasn’t particularly good, and it definitely wasn’t stylish. Reaching the World Cup semi-final had captured the imagination, but Italian football was aspirational.
People started wearing Italian club shirts - and not just football fans. There was a subset who wouldn’t be seen dead supporting an English team, but slept in their Gazza-era Lazio shirt until the ‘Banco di Roma’ started peeling off.
They were a tribe of football culture warriors.
It wasn’t that English club fans were above such fripperies. Most kids only ever doodled two things during maths: unflattering caricatures of their teacher, or football kits.
Fast forward to today, and the football shirt doesn’t just tell people who you support, but tells a story about when/how/where you supported them.
It’s a coded footballing and cultural reference point.
In fact, if you want to see men who consider shampoo an affront to their masculinity, let alone moisturizer, go full ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’, listen to them talk about whether this year’s kit would look better with hooped socks, or how the band on the away kit sleeve doesn’t continue the line of the shorts. Oh, and the wistful longing for the late 70’s ‘v’ collar.
You might buy this season’s jersey for gameday, but it isn’t SHARP-era United (electronics, not Lee), or 90’s OPEL Milan.
It isn’t special….yet.
So, back to the selling of jerseys, a certain online retailer has broken down their best selling jerseys by player, state, and club. On the face of it, we can dismiss it as a standard bit of marketing to flog some more Messi shirts on the back of Copa America.
Nothing wrong with that. They’d be fools not to.
So, what’s the subtext? Is there a story? Do they even sell enough jerseys?
Let’s take Pulisic. He’s interesting for a couple of reasons:
Are they Milan or USMNT jerseys? Or both?
Is it hyperbole? I’m not sure I’m with Carli Lloyd when she says on live TV, that with Messi and Ronaldo at the end of their careers, Pulisic is the next generational talent in that bracket.
However, once you do a little bit of digging, there’s one very telling stat that should make anyone sit-up and lay some respect down:
Pre-Pulisic, AC Milan sold an average of 300K jerseys per year globally with only 9% sold in the US.
In the Pulisic-era, Milan has seen a 75% global increase in shirt sales, up to 525K, with 43% of those sold in the US.
Should anyone outside of the US scoff at me for wearing a Pulisic Milan shirt (besides being too old to wear one), that’s the story.
That makes America some force to be reckoned with - at least culturally. Because they aren’t all being sold to Italian-Americans. The 9% pre-Pulisic would account for that.
And like the fall of Serie A after the heady days of the 90’s, the Premier League is flirting with its own final days of Rome.
We’re going to need another empire.
Just make sure you’re wearing the shirt.
EURO 2024 Round-up
Where to watch: all TV broadcasters around the globe from UEFA
Here’s the Last 16 bracket:
Marvelously well done Georgia. First ever tournament, ranked 74th in the world, and while it may have been Portugal’s reserve team, they were well worth their 2-0 win.
After all that whining yesterday, this is why we watch football.
And they’re getting 10 million euros off the former prime minister / billionaire for just getting out of their group. That’ll have them playing like England in no time!
And the other game in the group between the Czech Republic 1-2 Turkiyeiye finished 18-2:
And in the ongoing group of death, everybody finished on four points after all starting the day on three points. Slovakia 1-1 Romania, while Belgium drew 0-0 with Ukraine to a chorus of boos as they left the pitch. Ukraine go home despite finishing with more points than Slovenia.
COPA America Round-up
Mexico aren’t having a great tournament after failing to score a penalty and losing 1-0 to Venezuela, who qualified for the knockout stages. While Ecuador still have a chance to qualify after beating Jamaica 3-1.
Panama vs. United States
Date: Thursday, June 27
Location: Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta, Georgia
Time: 6 p.m. ET
TV: Fox
Streaming: Fox Sports App, FuboTV, Sling TV, TUDN and ViX
Uruguay vs. Bolivia
Date: Thursday, June 27
Location: MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey
Time: 9 p.m. ET
TV: Fox
Streaming: Fox Sports App, FuboTV, Sling TV, TUDN and ViX
In Other Soccer News
US Soccer aims to use 2026 World Cup to jump-start youth development. (LATimes $)
MLS: Brighton are interested in Inter Miami’s Diego Gomez (BBC)
PREMIER LEAGUE: Transfer gossip a go-go, with Chelsea after Alexander Isak for £115 million, obviously confused about the PSR loophole thing. Barcelona interested in Man City Julian Alvarez. And more (BBC)
Shaquille O’Neal is looking to buy a stake in West Ham (SUN)
Stat of the Day
For the first time in his career, Ronaldo has failed to score in the group stages of a major tournament. No wonder he looked grumpy.
The Daily Soccer Quote of the Day
"This is the best day in the lives of Georgians. We just made history. Nobody would believe what has happened, that we would defeat Portugal but this is why we’re a strong team. We just encourage each other and told each other that we could do that.”- Kvhicha Kvaratskhelia after 74th ranked Georgia beat 6th ranked Portugal.
Thanks for reading The Daily Soccer ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts