Football has always been a superstitious sport, and a lot of that superstition ends up attached to the kit. Shirts, socks and shin pads have all been blamed for defeats and credited for wins. Some players spent entire careers convinced that one item of clothing was holding everything together.
You see it at every level. Sunday League Clubs, societies and workplace teams design their own strips through the likes of My Club Group, and it rarely takes long before someone decides a certain shirt is lucky. The professionals have been at it for decades, though, and some of them took it a lot further.
Salt in the socks
Eric Cantona kept a salt pot in the Manchester United dressing room. Before games, he would tip some into his hand, pour it into his socks and then pull them on. It had to be the same pair of socks every time as well.
Paul Ince shared that dressing room and had a rule of his own. He would not put his shirt on until he was out on the pitch.
Lineker’s spare shirt
Gary Lineker treated goals as if there were only so many to go round. He never shot at goal in the warm-up in case he used one up before kick-off. If he had not scored by half time, he changed into a fresh shirt for the second half. He has talked about both habits on his podcast, and with 48 England goals to his name, he has earned the right to.
Ten years, one pair of shin pads
John Terry wore the same shin pads for ten years. They only went when he lost them during a game in Barcelona.
The detective and the missing shirt
Pelé once hired a detective to find a football shirt.
It was the mid-1960s and his form at Santos had dipped. Pelé put it down to a lucky shirt he had given to a fan, so he paid someone to track it down. A week later the shirt was back, and so were the goals. The detective had never found it. He had handed over a shirt Pelé wore in an earlier game, and Pelé was none the wiser.
Booked for being last
Not many players get a yellow card because of a superstition. Kolo Touré managed it.
Throughout his time at Arsenal, Touré had to be the last player onto the pitch. During a Champions League game against Roma in 2009, William Gallas needed treatment at half time and was still in the dressing room when the second half was due to start. Touré would not go out before him. The game restarted without either player, and when Touré did run on, the referee booked him for entering the pitch without permission.
Ferguson and the grey kit
Sir Alex Ferguson never liked Manchester United’s grey away kit. The team had already lost in it at Arsenal and Liverpool, so when they went 3-0 down at Southampton in April 1996, he had seen enough. The players came out for the second half in blue and white.
His explanation was that they could not pick each other out against the crowd, and most of football laughed. Gary Neville has since said there was some thinking behind it. The club had been working with a vision specialist who felt grey was too hard to spot in a busy stadium.
It did not save the day. United won the second half 1-0 and lost 3-1, and the grey kit was dropped soon after.
Numbers, seats and unwashed shirts
Shirt numbers bring their own trouble. Plenty of players avoid 13, and in most dressing rooms the number 9 starts more arguments than the team sheet.
Fans are just as bad. Some wear the same shirt every match day and refuse to wash it during a winning run. Others take the same route to the ground or will not watch a penalty shoot-out. Most will admit it makes no difference and carry on doing it anyway.
