One of the most distinctive continental shirts worldwide is undoubtedly that of Barcelona. Until the club’s recent arrangement with Unicef they were famous for never allowing their sacred shirt to be ‘desecrated’ by a sponsor’s logo. However the powers that be’s strict stance on the pureness of the Barca strip didn’t seem to prevent some truly hideous designs being worn by the club. Although this outfit (produced by Meyba) dates from an era when Barcelona did have a classic aesthetic on the pitch and is pretty familiar to UK fans thanks to the high profile presence at the Nou Camp of Terry Venables and several British players at this time. The kit was worn for an incredible seven seasons and featured a classic combination of stripes and a subtle Meyba trim on the sleeves making it surely one of the more memorable Barca outfits.
Worn in: Barcelona’s 1984–85 La Liga winning season.
Worn by: Gary Lineker, Steve Archibald, Mark Hughes.
Wasn’t the red a bit darker than that? And I’m sure it had a mesh vent under the arms.
This shirt was an absolute classic, and even the Barça shirt (also produced by Meyba) worn from 1989 to 1992 was identical, save for a shinier material with very narrow shadow stripes.
The shade of red is right though on the actual shirt – just that on television and in poor weather conditions it did look darker. I’m sure the mesh vent was on the player issue shirts, most certainly on the away jersey – I recall a pic of Diego Maradona in the away shirt with the mesh vents under the arms.
Incredible to think that this classic kit lasted for a staggering seven seasons, you definitely wouldn’t hear of a top club doing that today – especially now you consider Barça have a new home kit every season. Mind you come to think of it Spain was lagging behind with modern kits – before 1982 Barça’s kit looked like something from the 60’s, as did many clubs in La Liga before the turn of the 80’s.
beautiful kit that,the yellow away from 84 was nice too.
http://www.classicfootballshirts.co.uk/images/thumb_medium/Barcelona-86-HomeL.jpg
I don’t want to sound like a pedant, but I’ve got one of those shirts hanging in my wardrobe and it’s deffo a darker shade of red. It’s almost maroon. And it’s got the mesh under the arms. I got it off ebay a couple of years ago because it was a favorite of mine when I was a kid. Continental team did seem to be a decade behind with their kits in the 80s. Juventus still had wooly shirts when Rushie played for them. I thought they looked dead old fashioned at the time but I love them now.
When I was in primary school, my friend always used to go to Barcelona for hols…I had the delights of Bournemouth! He always used to come back with one of these and I used to think it looked so exotic at the time. I also remember Lineker wearing it along with an only slightly lighter shade of sun tan.
The official name for the Barcelona red is ‘grenadine’
Thanks for the comments everyone – Nick, I’ll get a revised version of the kit up – if you have a shirt in your wardrobe I can’t argue with you!! Denis thanks for the tip on the colour’s name and Rich as soon as I read your comment I had a mental pic of Linker’s awesome tan – I remember it well!
Jon is right. In the 80s and early 90s, Spanish teams didn’t change kits ver often. Atletico de Madrid used a very similar Puma shirt between the 84/85 season (when changed to Puma from Meyba) to 1994. In almost ten years, they only changed the shorts.
That’s quite a staggering feat, wearing the same shirt for ten years in the post-shirt sponsorship era. Also after spending the hours away on YouTube I noticed Atlético kept their red away kit for roughly the same amount of time too. They wore it in the Copa del Rey final of 1985, and after watching some clip from 1994 they wore the exact same away strip.
If you look back at football kit history in Spain, it’s very much different to what we’ve been more used over here. 60’s style kits were still in use at the turn of the 80’s, and even after that teams used kits for quite a lengthy period of time. It wasn’t until the 90’s when things changed, with teams regularly changing kits, and squad numbers were introduced – mad to think that prior to 1995 some teams were still wearing 2-11 that late (yes, 2 to 11, I still remember the incident with Deportivo’s keeper wearing sticky tape on his back at Aston Villa in a UEFA Cup tie!).
Now it’s as if every team in Spain has a new kit every season – Barça, Atlético and Real Madrid have had a new kit every year in the 2000’s – though Atlético did shun their 06/07 kit because it looked like something more suited to Feyenoord. They retained the 05/06 kit but wore the alternative strip when playing away from home.
I find it fascinating how Spain were so behind the times kit-wise in the 80s. It seems the whole continental kit design revolution of the early part of that decade passed them by.
I agree John, Spain were in a complete time warp when it came to updating kits at the time. In Italy there were some more radical kits coming out by still you can notice a difference in the amount of significant kit changes compared to the UK.
I recall reading somewhere when Gazza was going through the process of signing for Lazio, his management team felt they actually had to teach the club how to capitalise on his signing in merchandise terms as the whole country was so far back on the selling of Football Kits and merchandise in general.