Avoiding the Drop

I don’t know who makes the rules by which soccer bloggers and writers must abide, but apparently one of them is that you must hate Manchester United. Guess what? I don’t. I don’t love them either- I just don’t have a problem with them- or their success. Some of my favorite players (Cantona, Schmeichel, Giggs, etc.) have played for them, and believe it or not, I don’t even hate Sir Alex. Why am I telling you this? It’s simple: I’m writing about a shirt and how I acquired it, not about whether Manchester United is “good,” “evil,” or something in between, so please, please don’t turn the comment section into a referendum on it. You are more than welcome, however, to discuss at great lengthy the ethics- or lack thereof- surrounding the acquisition of the shirt pictured below. With that said, let us begin with a question: Is there anything better than “free?”

Yes. Yes, there is.

Manchester United home, 2002-2004

At one of the schools were I taught and coached we had a principal who was very big on “professional development.” He felt that as teachers and coaches we should always be improving ourselves, keeping up with the latest developments in our fields, etc. and that the parents of our students had a right to expect that part of the exorbitant tuition they were paying was going toward making sure that their children were getting the very best both inside and outside of the classroom. In short, we were told, not to hesitate to come to “us” (the administration) with requests ($$) along these lines. I took this pronouncement- as did most of my colleagues with a brain- with the proverbial “grain of salt.” Most of us assumed that, as was often the case, the only people and professional development “opportunities” that would receive approval would be those that were consistent with the “educational philosophy” of the administration. Whether this was true or not didn’t really matter until the fateful day that I reached into my school mailbox and pulled out a large envelope with a return address that read:

Manchester United Football Club

Sir Matt Busby Way

Old Trafford

Manchester, United Kingdom

M16 0RA

The mailing was to let me know that during the club’s upcoming U.S. tour, they would also be offering a “coaching symposium” at each of the match sites. For $99.00 attending coaches received admission to the symposium conducted by the club’s “staff” (one of whom was former United player and Scotland international Paddy Crerand if I’m not mistaken), a match ticket, and…wait for it…a replica shirt. This sounded pretty good to me, and it sounded even better if I could get somebody else to pay for it! Needless to say it was only a few minutes later that I was knocking on the office door of my athletic director. I explained to him that I wanted to go to a coaching clinic being put on by Manchester United (he wasn’t a “soccer guy” but he heard of United and he seemed to be impressed), when it was, and what the cost was going to be. His only request was that I save my receipts and bring back some sort of “confirmation” of my attendance at the conference. I may have neglected to mention the “free” match ticket and shirt that where also included in the cost of the clinic.

You didn't really think I was going to leave my name on it, did you?

Later that summer- July 31^st to be exact- I carpooled down to the Meadowlands with the school’s boys’ soccer coach (I’d tipped him off to the “deal” once I knew that the school would pay for it), we had a grand old time tailgating, spent a couple of hours listening to various members of the Manchester United family explain their “system” to us, collected lots of literature, our shirts, and our all important certificate of attendance, and then enjoyed the match- Manchester United defeated Juventus, 4-1. We returned to school, displayed our certificates, and turned in our receipts for a prompt and full reimbursement. All in all, a classic “win-win” situation. Now about the shirt…

It’s okay.

I think that United occasionally feels (or Nike “feels” for them) that they need to go with a more modern look, and this is the result- a no-frills template, stretchy fabric, a trimmer than normal silhouette, and a little too much black for my taste. Now, to be fair, this shirt suffers a bit from being a replica and not a “kit room” shirt of this era. Around this time Nike debuted something called “Cool Motion Technology”: basically the Nike kit room shirts (I believe Nike calls them “Code 7” shirts) had a built-in wicking “undershirt” (think UnderArmour “Heat Gear”) as well as numerous vented areas at the neck, under the arms, and down the sides (basically, the black areas of the replica shirt pictured above as well as the tail of the replica shirt below the black horizontal line). Some of you may remember these as the shirts that United players (and players on other teams- Arsenal, USMNT, Brazil, etc.- who wore the same tops) had trouble removing during goal celebrations- and even more trouble getting back on afterward. The replica shirts do not have this “advanced” construction. Rather, they mimic it by having the black mesh panels (which are a much heavier fabric than that used on the match quality shirts) and by having a double “tail” (see below) at the back of the shirt that makes it appear as though there is an inner shirt present.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that if one were able to revel in all of the technological advancement present in the Kit Room version it might make up for the fact that from a stylistic standpoint this is a pretty mundane shirt. Not only that, the fact that there is so much going on “behind the scenes” in the top of the line shirt only serves to highlight what is missing from the replica top. Why does that matter? It’s simple, anyone who buys a replica shirt is trying to say, thought they may be loathe to admit it, “Look at me, I’m on the team!!” Shirts like this, shirts that are clearly replicas, say something very different- “No, no you’re not,” and nobody wants to hear that.