During the summer of 2022 I reached out to fellow shirt collectors and football fans to help me collate a list of the top national football shirts of all time. I got a great response, with many people messaging and e-mailing me in their top 10. In total 260 shirts were nominated, with shirts from more than half of FIFA’s 211 members.
The scoring was done using the Eurovision methodolgy, with 12 points for a top pick etc. It’s obvious that shirts that have appeared at major tournaments are going to receive more nominations, because more people know about them. In order to tackle this issue, a small panel of shirt collectors who specialise in collecting national football shirts were selected and given a slightly higher weighting.
When a team wore home/away shirts of identical design I merged the votes, for instance if the green Jamaica 1998 shirt gets your vote, then you are likely to also be a big fan of the yellow home shirt, but wouldn’t likely list more shirts in your top 10. I also merged votes when shirts were almost identical, this was the case for many shirts in the 80s, but also Japan shirts in the 90s which were of the same design but changed manufacturer.
Finally, the top 20 has been revealed through a special episode of the Polyester Atlas. Please do subscribe to our channel, and let us know what you think of the results.
