by “First and foremost, the easiest way for a kit to become iconic is if the team is successful in it,” podcast host and football historian Peter Kenny Jones tells BBC Sport.
England were famously defeated by West Germany on penalties in the 1990 World Cup semi-final in Italy, but after decades of underperformance at major tournaments, Bobby Robson’s team showed the skill, determination and strength of character that fans had demanded.
“Although England didn’t win that tournament, they came home in an open-top bus parade and the whole country rallied around them,” Jones added.
“Paul Gascoigne became a national hero. Iconic moments like him crying and Gary Lineker asking the bench to say something.”
Not only was there a rise in sales of England shirts during and after Italia ’90, the shirt remains a fan favorite to this day.
However, it wasn’t just the Three Lions shirt from that tournament that captured the imagination.
Football fans Doug Bierton and Matthew Dale, who met while studying at university, have turned the sale of retro football shirts into an almost £40 million business empire.
The package that started it all? The West Germany home shirt worn during that World Cup. “I think it cost £20 in a charity shop in the student area of Manchester. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it,” says Bierton.
Italia ’90 was the first major football tournament Bierton saw on TV and it was the initial difficulty in tracking down this particular shirt, worn by the likes of Rudi Voller and Lothar Matthaus, that led him to assume that other fans had similar problems when looking for an old jersey.
The idea for classic football shirts was born. The business started out of a spare room and the first few shirts were purchased with Bierton and Dale’s student loans.
“My goal was to collect every Italia ’90 kit,” he said. “But the problem is they only made half of them that you can buy in the store. So you have to dig around, contact ex-players, go through wormholes to find them. I’ve checked off most of them, but I’m missing four.
“So I need Cameroon 1990, United Arab Emirates at home, Uruguay at home, South Korea at home. Then I have the full set.”
Bierton has a personal collection of around 6,700 match-worn shirts, while his company’s warehouse houses a million football shirts.
