How shameful that marketing men have robbed fans of seeing that iconic yellow shirt
AS an eight-year-old boy glued to his television set, Alessandro Del Piero had just seen Italy win the 1982 World Cup and yet it was another nation, specifically another shirt, he had fallen in love with.
‘Italy may have won the World Cup, but Brazil were the team who captured everyone’s imagination,’ the former Juventus star once said.
‘As a child, those yellow shirts were exotic, the football they played was breathtaking. From that moment, I have always felt a connection to them. They are close to my heart.’
That is what Brazil’s iconic yellow jerseys sell — a dream, an aura and an embodiment of sporting excellence. The shirt evokes memories of Zico, Garrincha, Pele, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Romario, Cafu, the list goes on. Alongside the pinstripes of the New York Yankees, it can legitimately claim to be the most iconic sports jersey ever.
That is why, when Brazil meet England at Wembley on Saturday, the first match between the teams since a 0-0 draw in 2017, it is a crying shame that it will be white versus blue, rather than white versus yellow. It is rare for Brazil to move away from their ‘sacred’ — as one Brazilian reporter put it to Mail Sport — Canarinho (Canary) jersey.
They wore blue — the colour of the mantle, or shawl, of Our Lady of Aparecida, the Catholic patron saint of Brazil — when defeating England 2-1 at the 2002 World Cup. Brazil also donned blue against the Three Lions in 1990 when Bobby Robson’s men ground out a 1-0 win thanks to Gary Lineker’s goal.
And while Brazil have worn yellow at Wembley on their previous six trips, perhaps the romanticism behind the kit, the inescapable nostalgia that it holds, is blinding us to the fact that national teams are now commercial behemoths.
There is beauty and simplicity to the origin story of Brazil’s yellow kit, one which emerged from heartache in 1950.
Wearing white at the Maracana, Brazil lost their home World Cup final to Uruguay in front of an estimated 200,000 fans and the kit, swiftly deemed unpatriotic, was determined to be unlucky.
In 1953 the football federation, along with the newspaper Correio
da Manha, launched a competition for fans to create a kit for a successful new era, on the proviso that it used colours from the national flag.
After 100 different sketches, the winning submission, from more than 300 entries, was by teenage illustrator Aldyr Garcia Schlee, who, in return for designing what would go on to be one of the most iconic shirts ever, was rewarded with enough money to buy himself a car, a permanent seat at the Maracana, an internship at Correio da Manha and a trip to the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland, where the shirt would debut.
Brazil, having never won a World Cup to this point, would take Schlee’s design and make it a symbol of good luck as they went on to win a record five World Cups — they had to wear blue in the final in 1958 due to a kit clash with Sweden, but wore yellow up to then in the tournament — and two Copa Americas.
Advertising around players and national teams was not a factor then, for the most part, and the kit stood unblemished, an emblem of excellence. Things are different now. Demands are different. Shirts need to sell, a lot. Commercial deals must be paid back. These days the Brazilian federation (CBF) have 16 sponsors and partners, with Nike the first on board back in 1996.
Guarana Antarctica, a soft drinks company, telecoms brand Vivo and Itau, a bank, are three other major partners that pay between £9.4million and £11.8m annually. At the 2022 World Cup, Brazil had as many as 20 endorsements. Signing a 10-year deal with Nike worth $400m was global news. It was, to that point, the biggest sports sponsorship deal for a national team.
At a lavish press launch on Sugarloaf mountain in Rio de Janeiro in December 1996, Nike, who flew in journalists from around the world, vowed to use its links with Brazilian football to ‘help make Nike the dominant brand in football’.
It was not universally well received. Juca Kfouri, Brazil’s leading sports columnist, said in 1999, when certain clauses in the deal were leaked: ‘It is obvious to me that the CBF gave away sovereignty.
‘The CBF is more interested in remuneration than the interests of the Brazil national team.’
Two years later, the issue of commercialising the national team made its way to parliament. ‘Disney didn’t sell Mickey Mouse, but the CBF sold the Brazil national team to Nike. It should have sold the spectacle, not the product,’ said Aldo Rebelo, a left-wing congressman.
A cynic would point to the decision for Brazil to walk out at Wembley in blue this weekend as a not-so-subtle marketing ploy. Millions will watch. How many of those millions can be convinced to buy?
Sportswear companies often use friendlies as an opportunity to parade and market different jerseys, and in a week when Brazil and Nike released their latest kits ahead of this summer’s Copa America, Wembley represents a convenient opportunity to push Brazil in blue.