The 20 best retro and modern football shirts to wear this summer

Italia ‘90 is remembered as one of the best tournaments, and that was especially true for England fans. A young Gazza had the world at his feet and helped inspire England to their first World Cup semi-finals since the glory of 1966. Arguably the main success story, though, was New Order’s World in Motion, which had arrived just before the tournament started and featured the now-iconic rap from John Barnes.

Throughout the video, New Order frontman Bernard Sumner wore England’s light blue third shirt. The jersey’s tonal diamond pattern and musical heritage cemented it as a cult classic, even if the England team rarely wore it.

At the start of the 2021/22 season, Ajax and adidas decided to celebrate one of the club’s anthems, Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds. While it might seem like an incongruous choice, the song has been associated with Ajax since 2008, when it was played by a Cardiff City DJ after a friendly.

Designed to honour the fans’ enthusiasm for the song, Ajax released a black kit complete with Jamaica-inspired red, yellow and green detailing. Finishing off the design were three little birds on the back of the neck. Although UEFA forced Ajax to remove the three-bird motif, the shirt still sold out almost instantly.

Ahead of the 2018 World Cup, there was one kit that everyone was talking about. Nigeria’s shirt for the tournament featured a zig-zag pattern in light green and white across the chest, with a black and white version on the sleeves. Unsurprisingly, the shirt broke records – making it difficult to find nowadays – with 3 million pre-orders and a long queue outside Nike’s London store.

Nike clearly knew they were onto a winner and continued to reissue the shirt over the coming months and years. The brand even carried the design onto boots and trainers, while the shirt was also nominated for the Beazley Design of the Year award.

Described as the “world’s coolest club,” Italian team Venezia launched their 2021/22 away kit to widespread praise before the last season. The design pays tribute to the city of Venice with a repeated triangle pattern inspired by the city’s tile mosaics.

The stand-out feature of the shirt, though, was the gradient-effect across the shirt. With a cream base acting as an understated background, the triangle motif shifted between Venezia’s orange, black and green colours as it moved across the shirt. Bellissimo.

Nowadays best known as the Bruised Banana, Arsenal’s early ‘90s away kit is rightly the stuff of legend. The kit – complete with a black and yellow chevron design, red detailing, and the adidas Originals Trefoil – was worn by the club from 1991 until 1993.

Despite Ian Wright’s admission that he and the players hated the kit at first, it went on to be a fan favourite. Arsenal and adidas updated the kit for 2019/20’s away shirt, before finally rereleasing the original design in all its glory at the end of 2019.

The adidas full roster of 2023 Women's World Cup kits is sensational this year, it was hard to pick our favourite. adidas looked to nature to celebrate the iconic scenery and diverse natural landscapes of their ten teams competing, the brand hoping to connect players and fans alike, by encouraging a shared appreciation of the wonders of the natural environment in their country. 

The Japan 2023 Away kit takes the crown with its pink hues, its inspiration taken from the beautiful pink sunrise witnessed at Mount Fuji. The sunrise represents the collective mission of the Japanese team - as the Women’s World Cup emerges on the horizon - to add another winner’s star to the team badge. What a kit.

The late '80s were when international kits really became interesting. Gone were the days of staid solid colours, and in their place came a range of experimental patterns and combinations. Obviously, not all of them were successful, but the Dutch kit for the 1988 Euros is still one of the all-time best.

The iconic orange remained, but this time it was designed in an all-over tonal pattern, with lighter sections across the shirt to form a series of arrows. The design was finished with a V-neck collar and the adidas Trefoil logo, helping to certify it as one of the best ever.

The best summer football shirt we ever did see. That marzipan base? Big win. Paired with the navy? Even bigger win.

With its inspiration drawn from a fan-favourite historical FC Porto jersey, the Porto 2023-24 season away kit is simply sensational. Intersecting geometric shapes run across the jersey’s chest, framing the Porto club crest, with vertical shadow stripes providing a fresh look and feel. A kit we can't wait to see out on the pitch.

In the early ‘90s, Olympique Marseille were the dominant force in French football. They’d begun the decade on a run of four consecutive Ligue 1 wins and an appearance in the Champions League final. For the last of those four league triumphs, the club wore one of Europe’s all-time great kits.

Arriving in OM’s signature white and sky blue, the shirt was best known for the giant adidas three stripes that reached across one shoulder. Combine that with a team that mixed the youth of Marcel Desailly and Didier Deschamps, the goals of Jean-Pierre Papin and the flair of Chris Waddle, and Marseille were on to a winner.

The major footballing event of the summer is the 2023 Women's World Cup, and what a summer it's going to be. A fitting time to show your support for the Euro-winning Lionesses, Nike have unveiled the home and away kits we'll be seeing on the pitches of Australia and New Zealand this summer.

The stunning England National Team Collection is inspired by the Art Deco movement and the design of the legendary Wembley Stadium - celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. The home kit features an off-white colour scheme modelled after the original Wembley's chalky white brick exterior of 1923. The colours also pay homage to the 1984 England women's team, the country's first women's team assembled for a major tournament.

AC Milan’s kit for the 1988/89 season didn’t differ too much from the Rossoneri’s signature design, but the shirt is a connoisseur’s classic. The red and black stripes that give the club its nickname were worn by one of the great AC Milan teams, featuring Ancelotti, Maldini, Baresi, Van Basten, Gullit and more.

It’s hard to say what makes it such an iconic jersey, but the smart collar acts as a nice counterpoint to the black and red stripes. Even the all-white Mediolanum sponsor logo adds to the kit’s design.

Denmark have been the proud wearers of some of Europe’s better international kits – the 1992 Euros-winning shirt in particular – but there aren’t many that come close to the 1986 design. Worn for the country’s first-ever World Cup appearance, the kit was designed by Denmark-based Hummel and put a slight twist on the classic red and white colours.

Featuring a half-and-half design, the shirt featured one solid red section set against a red and white pinstripe half. The same approach continued onto the sleeves, which were situated in the opposite order, while the design was finished with Hummel’s chevrons and a navy-trimmed V-neck collar.

An instant classic and big win in the kit collaboration books - a Wales Bonner kit can simply do no wrong. Described as 'Jamaican culture recoded', the Jamaica x Wales Bonner 2023 away kit saturates those world-famous red, yellow and green colours for an '80s-inspired look.

The perfect kit for summer.

FC Tokyo are one of the newer names in the New Balance roster, and the J-League team’s kits have garnered a cult following. For the 2022 season New Balance and FC Tokyo stuck true to the team’s red and blue colour palette, even with an away kit that put its own spin on the traditional colours.

Featuring a white base, the shirt is adorned with thin horizontal stripes that mix the red and blue. The shirt is then finished with “You’ll Never Walk Alone” on the inside collar.

As the kit that France wore to claim their first World Cup – and on home soil, no less – the 1998 kit was always going to be popular. As well as because of what Zidane et al did in the shirt, its popularity is also partly due to its design. The predominantly blue jersey incorporates the colours of France’s tricolor with red and white horizontal stripes, offering a new take on the traditional colours.

The 1998 victory resonated far beyond just football, with the multicultural French team helping to unify the country with its run to the trophy. This kit is symbolic of what that team and that World Cup meant.

Barcelona's Blaugrana stripes are famous the world over, but in the late '90s the Catalan club revisited the design for a special-edition kit. Marking the club’s centenary year, the kit eschewed stripes altogether and replaced them with a half-and-half blue and red design.

The kit’s design was finished with gold detailing – reading 1899 and 1999 on either side of the central badge – and dark blue collar and sleeves. This kit also launched in Barcelona’s pre-sponsor halcyon days and coincided with Rivaldo’s Ballon d’Or win. No wonder it's an all-time classic.

The best West Germany kit was also the last West Germany kit, being worn through the late 1980s until the 1990 World Cup and the country’s reunification. While its design keeps the team’s black and white colours intact, it's the Bauhaus-style flag running across the chest that made the kit stand out.

Even now, more than 30 years since it was launched, the kit remains popular, although the less said about Germany’s 1991 away shirt – which mixed a green background with the same flag graphic – the better. An updated version of the graphic also returned for the 2018 World Cup, although its black-and-white design never lived up to its predecessor.

Drake’s famous appearance in Juventus’ pink away shirt saw the design cross over fully into the fashion world. It’s still not clear if Drake wore the shirt because he’s a fan of the Old Lady, or if it was purely due to the shirt’s design.

In the long history of football kits, pink has been a rarely used colour, and its appearance on Juventus’ away kit back in 2015 destined the shirt for modern-classic status. Even the massive “JEEP” logo in the middle somehow added to the shirt’s appeal.

Yellow and blue stripes, a big Champion logo, Hernan Crespo’s long hair. Parma’s 1999-2000 home shirt had it all. The Champion C is also carried on along the sleeves, complementing the shirt’s dark single-button collar and massive lower-case Parmalat sponsor.

The shirt also marked the dying days of Parma’s glory years. Within four years, Parma would be stuck in insolvency, and a slow descent through the Italian leagues followed. But still, the club will always have some of the best kits of the era.

Brazilian club Fluminense is blessed with one of world football’s most unique colour combinations, making every kit an eye-catching choice. The shirts always mix green and dark red (officially described as “Garnet”) with thinner white stripes, and the colour combination works to give all kits a retro-inspired look.

The 2022 home shirt was finished with the club’s crest – in the same colours – as well as an Umbro logo, white collar, and stripes along the shoulders. Marking the club’s 120th anniversary, a little hit of silver celebrates the milestone.