Review: Serie A 80-90 - An Illustrated History
The older I get, the more I realise how difficult it is to write well about football kits. One tends to describe what each one looks like, but it takes discipline and verbal dexterity to make those descriptions sound interesting. Beyond that, there’s not much that can be said about a kit, other than mentioning when it was worn, by whom, or in which competition.
Much better, then, to just show what a kit looks like, and let the pictures do the talking. Make use of illustrations rather than photos and you’ve definitely got a recipe for success. That’s what Peter O’Toole is doing with his series of kit history books, and you can’t help feeling that the format works just right.
This latest title (O’Toole’s third) specifically focuses on the kits of Serie A throughout the 1980s - a wonderful subject that predates the classic ‘Football Italia’ era remembered fondly by so many. To understand how we got to Gazza’s Lazio and Gianfranco Zola’s Parma, this book shows just about every kit that was worn from 1980-81 to 1989-90 - home, away and variation.
While some of us tend to illustrate kits in a fairly conventional way - clean lines, optimised appearance, etc - Peter O’Toole has developed a comic book style that stands out from the crowd very well. Like players from a version of Roy of the Rovers that never existed, the hand-drawn approach lends itself nicely to the depiction of kits in all their detail and colour.
Naturally enough, being able to draw competently is only one thing. Knowing what to draw is quite another, and here the author has certainly done his due diligence. As is mentioned in the introduction, Peter bought over 750 issues of Guerin Sportivo - Italy’s leading monthly football magazine - in order to find all the research material he needed. The result is a book featuring 838 kits across 29 clubs.
This is no lazy collection of the biggest teams and most well-known kits. If you’ve never heard of Pistoiese or seen Internazionale’s second-choice away kit from the 1985-86 season, prepare to be surprised. Speaking personally, Serie A has always been at the outer reaches of my curiosity, so there was always going to be much for me to enjoy between the covers. As it is, I quickly found myself asking “Avellino? Who are they?” in the manner of a latter-day TV commercial for the Milk Marketing Board. And that was just on the third page.
On I went, marvelling at so much that I’ve never seen before; familiar templates for once prestigious clubs, colour combinations that were alien to the UK football scene, and sponsor logos that might as well have been from another planet. It really was a privilege to have so many related football kits presented in one book, allowing me to discover most of them for the first time and at the same time.
Though compact in size, the 50 or more pages are packed full of wonderful graphics, professionally printed and always a pleasure to thumb through. It’s also very difficult to make any negative comment about, because Peter has clearly put in a lot of time and effort on this project. It’s possible the book could have benefited from some descriptive text for each kit, detailing kit manufacturers, players that wore the kit or matches in which they featured, but that feels unfair for such a well-produced title. It probably would have also doubled the time it took to put together - barely tolerable for any of us hungry for decent quality kit literature.
All things considered, this is a book I’m delighted to add to my collection as much for its illustrations as its usefulness in researching Italian football. And potential buyers take note - Peter O’Toole’s previous publications look at the League of Ireland and National Soccer League of Australia. Overlook them at your peril.
Serie A 80-90 - An Illustrated History can be ordered via Wallberry for £11.99