Avoiding the Drop

The Shirt Tournament of Champions is our quest to figure out what the best football shirt of all time is. It may not be perfect, but we’re doing it our way, with some fun and knowledge. More information on the tournament and all current matchups can be found here, here, and here.

I don’t think that anyone would deny that Aston Villa had a fairly easy route to this point. They beat a rather ugly New England Revolution shirt and then a Pachuca shirt that was willed into the next round by our good buddy Hector. Argentina though has beaten some of the big boys to get to this spot. They had to face a pretty cool Eintracht Braunschweig shirt and then went against a very sharp Manchester City shirt. Is Aston Villa able to make yet another daring cup run with this shirt and defeat a heavyweight, or is Argentina just too class to be taken down right now?

1986 Argentina

Despite the negatives associated with Argentina in the 1986 World Cup, this truly is a beautiful shirt. Maybe because I’m a sucker for blue and white stripes I find any Argentina shirt to be very good looking, but I especially like this one because of the simplicity. The blue is perfect, and there isn’t anything more to it other than the stripes and the gold crest, which is a perfect accent to the blue and white scheme.

1982 Aston Villa Away

England wasn’t always dominated by the big 4, well before 2003 there wasn’t even a big 4, but you get what I mean. England has had it’s traditional powers, but thirty years ago it was much easier for a club like Villa to do really well and work their way into a European Cup spot. Villa managed to defeat traditional powerhouse Bayern Munich wearing this shirt. That alone probably qualifies them for this tournament.

It’s also a really nice shirt though. (Again, I’m glad I don’t have to talk about yet another plain white shirt) While I like white the claret pinstripes really set this one off. It’s simple yet the stripes do a lot for it. The v-neck is also a nice touch, especially with the claret pinstripe going around it. Overall this is really how a shirt with stripes should be done. Modern manufacturers always want to add strange side panels or do something “fun” and “different” with the stripes, but this shirt shows that less is more.