Kit (association football)

In association football, kit is the standard equipment and attire worn by players. The sport’s rules specify the minimum kit which a player must use. In the event of a match between teams with identical or similar colours, the away team must change to different coloured attire. Footballers generally wear identifying numbers on the backs of their shirts.

About Kit (association football) in brief

Summary Kit (association football)In association football, kit is the standard equipment and attire worn by players. The sport’s rules specify the minimum kit which a player must use, and also prohibit the use of anything that is dangerous to either the player or another participant. Individual competitions may stipulate further restrictions, such as regulating the size of logos displayed on shirts. In the event of a match between teams with identical or similar colours, the away team must change to different coloured attire. Footballers generally wear identifying numbers on the backs of their shirts. Originally a team of players wore numbers from 1 to 11, corresponding roughly to their playing positions, but at the professional level this has generally been superseded by squad numbering. Professional clubs also usually display players’ surnames or nicknames on their shirts, above their squad numbers. Most professional clubs have retained the same basic colour scheme for several decades, and the colours themselves form an integral part of a club’s culture. The England national team sometimes plays in red shirts even when it is not required, as this was the strip worn when the team won the 1966 FIFA World Cup. In some cases both teams have been forced to wear their second choice away kits, such as the match between Netherlands and Brazil in the 1974 World Cup where they wore white and dark blue rather than their first choice of orange and yellow, respectively. Many professional clubs also have a third kit, ostensibly to be used if both their first-choice and away colours are deemed too similar to those of an opponent.

The English national team, for example, wear the colours of the Savoy House and the Australian National team wear the green and gold, neither of which appear on the Royal House of gold. The Dutch national team wear orange, the colour of a polyester mesh, which does not trap the sweat in the same way as a shirt of a natural fibre. Most teams have a second-choice kit, which is often referred to as its \”away kit\” or \”away colours\”, although it’s not unknown, especially at international level, for teams to opt to wear their away colours even when not required to by a clash of colours, or to wear them at home. The rules set out the basic equipment which must be worn by all players in Law 4. Goalkeepers are allowed to wear tracksuit bottoms instead of shorts. While most players wear studded football boots or \”cleats\” in North America), the Laws do not specify that these are required. Shirts must have sleeves, and goalkeepers must wear shirts which are easily distinguishable from all other players and the match officials. Thermal undershorts may be worn, but must be the same colour as the shorts themselves. Shin pads must be covered entirely by the stockings, be made of rubber, plastic or a similar material, and \”provide a reasonable degree of protection\”. The only other restriction on equipment defined is the requirement that a players must not use equipment or wear anything deemed dangerous to himself or another player.