The World Cup of Football Shirt Logos
Background
It was in mid-May 2020 that Brian from Charity Shop Finds' Football Shirts announced on Twitter that he was in the early stages of planning a World Cup of Football Shirt Logos. And quite right too. The humble manufacturer's logo may be small in size, but it plays a big role in giving a football shirt lasting credibility and is often taken for granted. Surely the time had come to salute the finest football shirt logos and determine an all-time winner...
Having received various nominations from @loumacarichippy, a list of over 30 entrants quickly formed but when Brian asked his Twitter followers to suggest some more, that list quickly grew and grew. Such was the overwhelming interest of people from around the world, Brian realised that he wouldn't have time to invest in such a big project and reluctantly asked if someone else was interested in running it. That's where I come in...
The logos
Having already done my own research on football kit suppliers in England, Scotland and Wales, I was quickly able to expand the number of logos for this competition to 256. Most of them, admittedly, are British kit suppliers from the 1970s to the present day, but many of the international names suggested by Brian's Twitter followers have been retained and added to. In an ideal world, this competition would feature even more logos from every country and every era, but unfortunately it's just not possible.
As it is, this competition comprises of logos from the biggest global names to the smallest local companies. No matter what their size, many have created an easily identifiable motif that football fans love, and some have even changed their logo over and over again. Where this is the case, I've tried to include as many significant variations of the logo as possible. Some of you may disagree with this approach, but I believe that different logos for the same company tend to have their own good and bad points. If you think that one brand has an unfair advantage by having multiple entries in the competition, this isn't necessarily the case. One brand's single logo can be better than all five iterations of another brand!
Format
In my experience, online voting competitions in a 'World Cup' format can be great fun, but they can also quickly become boring if they go on too long. With this in mind, I've tried to create a structure to the competition that will allow as many logos as possible to be involved while also not outstaying its welcome (hopefully). Here's how it's going to play out...
First, there will be a Preliminary Round in which our 256 logos will be split into 64 groups. For each group, you'll have the chance to vote for your favourite logo on Twitter or here on the Kitbliss website. You'll have three days to register your votes in each case, after which all the votes from Twitter and the Kitbliss website will be combined and all the group winners will be established.
Those group winners then progress to the First Round where they'll be drawn into sixteen groups and once again, you'll get three days to register your favourite logo in each one. The most popular logo in each group again qualifies for the next round - in this case, the Round of 16.
From here on, the competition switches to a straight knockout format - logo v logo, the winner progressing to the next round until we find out our eventual winner.
Preliminary Round
The draw for the Preliminary Round took place on Sunday 7 June 2020 at 9am BST. You can watch it here.
