The football shirt controversy: Cameroon and other curious stories

On the eve of the 2002 World Cup, Haiti's kit supplier, Saeta, announced that its shirt had been deemed unsuitable. Some images on the shirt, depicting Haitian revolutionaries from the early 1800s, were considered political and therefore not permitted, due to strict FIFA rules on uniforms. Changes were made hastily, and the team ended up taking the field with a much simpler shirt. But this wasn't the first time this happened. In fact, it is a long tradition for FIFA to reject shirts based on its extensive and often questionable regulations.

For example, at the 2022 World Cup, Belgium had to alter their away shirts because the word "love" was embroidered on the inside of the collar. This detail was interpreted as a message of solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community, as Belgium used 'One Love' armbands in friendlies before the tournament, but it was actually part of a partnership with the Tomorrowland music festival: according to FIFA rules, there cannot be commercial messages on any shirt, not even on the inside of the collar. This was not accepted. Ukraine's Euro 2020 shirt also caused controversy because part of its design featured an outline of the country that included Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014 but widely recognized as part of Ukraine.

But perhaps the most famous example of a shirt banned by football authorities came when Puma decided to innovate with the Cameroon shirt ahead of two tournaments in 2002: the Africa Cup of Nations in Mali and the World Cup in South Korea and Japan. This shirt, developed by Puma, had a simple but radical difference from most kits: it was sleeveless. “Whenever we needed to change the shirt, Puma gave us suggestions on the design,” says Patrick Suffo, a member of the Cameroon national team. "We visited Puma's headquarters in Germany a year before the shirt was launched.


There were several reasons why players and designers opted for a sleeveless shirt: some practical and others a little more cynical, from a commercial point of view. “Everything was related to the weather in Mali,” explains Suffo. "It's very hot, dry heat. Furthermore, we wanted to do something out of the ordinary, something that no one else had done before. It was Puma's way of having an impact there." Another practical reason was to reduce the pull of the shirts. "A lot of what we were working on was based on reducing the pull of the shirts," says Rob Warner, Puma's designer at the time. "Until Kappa made that tight shirt in 2000 for Italy, the shirts were generally loose on the players. And so, shirt pulling was becoming a big problem.

The shirts caused a stir when they were released, but were incredibly popular with players. They were used in the African Cup of Nations, which Cameroon won, defeating Senegal on penalties in the final. "I felt free (wearing the sleeveless shirts)," says Suffo, "and that helped with the heat in Mali." He also believes the jerseys have actually given them an advantage, from a mental standpoint. He laughs at the suggestion that Cameroonian players showing off their biceps probably didn't help and adds: "The Cameroonians have always been big, so for the other team to see us like that, lookingall muscular...it had a psychological impact too." The design was popular in the world at large. "Serena Williams saw it and wanted a version of Cameroon's sleeveless shirt as a dress," says Warner. Williams, who was sponsored by Puma at the time, wore an interpretation of the shirt at that year's French Open, complete with yellow football-style socks.

But FIFA was not so excited. Before each World Cup, teams must submit their uniform designs for approval. There is a long list of criteria that they must meet, and this shirt did not suit the new sleeves that were introduced for that World Cup and which have been present on every shirt since. Since applying these sleeves to players' arms was not an option, a new approach was needed. Instead of manufacturing a new batch of shirts, Puma simply sewed sleeves onto existing ones. “It was quite difficult because when you make a sleeveless shirt, you tend to make the armhole smaller,” says Warner. "We had to think about how to solve this because if we just put a normal sleeve on, the players wouldn't be able to raise their arms.

So we ended up using a black mesh, called 'power mesh', which was super stretchy but also very tight. The other detail was that the armpits were not closed on these shirts, because if we had closed them completely, even with the stretchy fabric, it still wouldn't work. Fortunately, it was before the era of 4k television, so no one saw exposed armpits when there was a pitch. The sleeveless shirts were still available to the public as replicas; it was only in games authorized by FIFA that they were prohibited. Cameroon ended up being eliminated in the group stage of that World Cup with their sleeves sewn up. A coincidence? Well, yes, probably. A few years later, they tried another experiment: an "all-in-one" shirt, where the shirt and shorts were one piece, like a track athlete's tunic, which again was designed to help eliminate the tugging of shirts — but it wasn't as popular with players. They were restrictive and presented problems if a player got injured. “If you got hurt, you had to take everything off,” says Suffo. It is quite rare for shirts to actually be banned by the authorities, like this one in Cameroon, but there have been many other interesting facts over the years relating to World Cup uniforms. For example, in 1986, Argentina had to wear an alternative shirt in their quarter-final against England, instead of the traditional light blue and white stripes. The problem was that their official away shirts provided by Le Coq Sportif were made from a very heavy fabric, impractical given that the game started at noon in the scorching Mexico City sun. So a delegation was sent to a well-known and busy area of ​​Mexico City called Tepito, famous for its markets. Guided by reserve goalkeeper Hector Zelada, who played for Club América in Mexico City, they discovered a set of navy blue shirts, much lighter and better ventilated, and, after intense negotiations, purchased a set for the entire team. The task then was to make the shirts look official, so some team members stayed up all night before the game stitching numbers, the Argentina crest and the Le Coq Sportif logo. It worked really well, and it's undeniably funny that Diego's iconic #10 jerseyMaradona, in which he scored the "Hand of God" goal and his sensational second goal, and which was later sold for 9.3 million dollars, was a copy bought in a Mexican market. Speaking of alternatives, there is also the famous story of Johan Cruyff's stripes. Holland's kits in the 1970s were supplied by Adidas and therefore had the famous three stripes on each arm. But Cruyff was sponsored by Puma, so he couldn't be seen endorsing his great rivals, so because Cruyff was Cruyff and could do whatever he wanted — including ignoring the shirt numbering system — which led to goalkeeper Jan Jongbloed wearing the No. 8 shirt; Cruyff wore his traditional 14 at his only World Cup in 1974 — he was allowed to wear his own special version, with two stripes on each arm. Some designs have a slightly darker story behind them, such as the shirts worn by Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the 1974 World Cup, which featured a huge roaring lion on the front and were supposedly designed by the country's dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. On a similar theme, when Italy faced a uniform clash in their quarter-final against France in 1938, they theoretically should have worn their white away shirts, but by Benito Mussolini's decree, they entered the field wearing black shirts, a clear symbol of the fascist regime. This has been a bit exaggerated over the years: they still wore their traditional Azzurri blue in the final against Hungary, but the symbolism of the black shirts, especially when accompanied by the fascist salute they gave before the game, was evident. Another that fits into the 'uniform oddities' category is Brazil, which actually wore white with blue trim until the 1950s, rather than the yellow that has become iconic since then. But the trauma of the 1950 World Cup final defeat to Uruguay was so great that change was necessary, like a kind of sartorial exorcism. A competition was launched in a newspaper to design a new shirt based on the Brazilian flag, which was won by an illustrator called Aldyr Garcia Schlee, who chose the classic yellow, blue and white we know today. Not that Schlee was especially happy about his legacy. "No," he said, when asked by the BBC if he felt proud of his contribution to football's aesthetics. "The truth is, it's never been more important to me. Maybe I feel a little guilty, actually, for creating something that isn't as pure as it once was, something that is now about money. The aesthetics of each World Cup are genuinely important to our collective memory of them. And as things like broadcast quality and stadium design become increasingly standardized, making each tournament look more and more similar, shirt design becomes increasingly important to its visual identity. It's just that there are often a lot of great stories behind it. aesthetics too.