The shirt off my back

At the home of the Premier League and European champions, it is not a shock to see Haaland and Jack Grealish feature prominently inside the superstore at the Etihad Stadium.

Haaland, 23, pulls in huge numbers after helping his side to the treble last season and his No 9 shirt, the first you see when walking inside the City Store, is the most purchased. Fanatics, a global digital sports platform, tells The Athletic that Haaland has sold the most shirts across Europe through their site this year, but that Bellingham is quickly catching up.

Specific numbers around shirt sales were not disclosed by clubs or retailers when requested by The Athletic, but at City, this has been a record year for the retail department, highlighted this summer when their new shirt was bought every 12 seconds on the day of release — the busiest 24 hours of trading they have ever recorded.

Across town at United, the days of queueing outside Old Trafford to get a printed ‘Ronaldo 7’ shirt may be over but there’s continued love towards local hero Marcus Rashford.

Down in London, Arsenal have one of the biggest shirt printing displays in the country with a huge section named “Your Shirt, Your Way” in their club shop. Declan Rice is a popular recent request following his £105million summer move from West Ham United but lags way behind his club and England team-mate Bukayo Saka and Arsenal’s captain Martin Odegaard.

In Liverpool’s plush multi-storey megastore at their Anfield stadium — a thriving retail operation even on non-matchdays — thousands visit each week and are greeted by rows of shirts and other merchandise on arrival. The club website said in September that summer arrival Dominik Szoboszlai was the most requested name in the printing department in the early months of this season, although other online retailers have since said the club’s long-time top goalscorer Mohamed Salah still leads the way overall. According to those who know about these things, ‘Szoboszlai 8’ “fits beautifully” on the back of a shirt and has a “perfect ratio” of different letters. While that may sound far-fetched, it shouldn’t be forgotten that being easy on the eye is a crucial element to the success of a printed football shirt.

Industry insiders say there’s a shift towards supporters choosing to have their own name and choice of number printed on their club’s shirt, with a greater desire for ‘authenticity’ among younger fans.

The demand from supporters also dictates clubs’ strategy, so Brighton & Hove Albion decided to cater for their growing number of Japanese supporters by creating an area within their club shop, as City did for Haaland, specifically for popular winger Kaoru Mitoma.

The 26-year-old is not quite in Son Heung-min territory — the Tottenham Hotspur striker and captain, who is holding the fort following the summer departure of Harry Kane to German champions Bayern Munich, is a leading shirt seller for his club and the game’s most-popular Asian player worldwide.

For years, Son has been the poster boy of the South Korea national team and, according to Fanatics, is the fifth-best shirt-seller across Europe since the start of the season.

One of Son’s international team-mates, Hwang Hee-chan, also sells more shirts than anyone else at his Premier League club, Wolverhampton Wanderers. Revenue from South Korea has increased 1,264 per cent for Wolves in the two years since his signing — this summer, one wholesaler ordered 1,500 of their shirts, all with “Hee Chan 11” on the back.

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The Political Economy of Football V2

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