The ‘relatives’ of Athletic (I)

In 1902, Athletic Club replaced its improvised kit consisting of a white shirt and shorts with black socks with another one that more or less coincided with that of the English Blackburn Rovers: a shirt with two stripes, one dark blue and the other white, dark blue shorts and dark blue socks along with a white stripe at the top. The history of Athletic gave a 180-degree twist when the manager and player Juan Elorduy, on a trip to England during Christmas 1909, received the errand to buy 50 blue-and-white shirts from Blackburn to distribute them equally between Athletic and the branch located in Madrid (the embryo of what is today Atletico de Madrid, which years later disassociated itself from our entity). Elorduy returned to ‘Botxo’ with 50 garments from Southampton FC, whose characteristic attire was uniform with red and white stripes (the colours of the Bilbao flag).

That garment was worn for the first time in 1910, on January 9th in a match played at Amute against Sporting de Irun (Real Unión Club). A year later, the black trousers were introduced. Over time, the number of stripes on the shirt has changed slightly, although it has usually consisted of four to five medium-thick red stripes on a white background.

In the British Isles, there are more than twenty teams who, at the end of the 19th century, used the same design and colours for their shirts, red and white with vertical stripes. We know the specific year in which the first shirt of this type appeared: 1883.

But which team can be attributed the honour of being the pioneer? There is no single name that can be given for the simple reason that in the same year two teams coincided in choosing the red and white shirt, discarding their respective original outfits, and curiously enough, both are based in towns only 58 kilometres apart in the West Midlands: Stoke and Wolverhampton Wanderers, two of the 12 founding members of the English Football League, in 1888.

The change of uniform came at a special time for both of them because, apart from playing friendly matches and minor tournaments, both the potters and the wolves began their journey that same year in the oldest championship in the world, the FA Cup, despite the fact that the tournament had already been held twelve times. At this point, it is not possible to know for sure which of the two teams used it in the first place, although it would not be fair to mention one of them when they both appeared at the same time with the red and white. Even so, if the standard is based on participation in an official competition, Wolverhampton would take the lead, as they made their debut in the first round of the Cup on October 27, 1883; and two weeks later, Stoke did so.

Wolverhampton Wanderers, with the first trophy in its history, the Wrekin Cup (1884).

 

However, the Stoke-on-Trent, which is the second oldest professional club in the world after Notts County, remains faithful to the red and white stripes to this day. The wolves are the exact opposite: they have worn a golden-ochre shirt and socks with black trousers for much of their history.

What we can confirm is that Wolverhampton was the first to introduce the red and white shirt with black trousers and socks, or in other words, the closest thing to Athletic Club. As an interesting fact, after many washes, the press ended up describing the colour of their shirts as ‘dirty pink’ or ‘faded red’.

The coincidence of uniforms between different teams was the trigger for the Football League to implement from 1891 the official registration of the distinctive colours of each club without the possibility of matching between them. At that time, the wolves abandoned their usual kit to avoid similarity with Sunderland AFC, which became the club with the first red and white shirt under the new official registration. Stoke was unable to keep its classic ‘red and white striped shirt’ because of Sunderland’s better sporting record, but in 1908, under the name of Stoke FC, the potters started using their colours again, and have never left them (before the introduction of the uniform manual the team had already played in their classic outfits in the first two editions of the Football League).

In addition, Sunderland completed the outfit with black trousers and socks from 1888, becoming the first team to do so since the introduction of the new register.

Book cover Sunderland FC season 1891-92 by Don Gillian

In the current Premier League, Sheffield United, founded in 1889, wears red and white, with black trousers and red socks. While the club originally wore a white shirt, in 1891 they introduced fine red stripes on a white background, a design to which the club would return briefly for its 125th anniversary in 2015/16, and it was not until 1894 that it first adopted the famous red-striped shirts in the style of our lions. Their four FA Cup and league victories of 1898 were won with the classic vertical stripes.

The other club in the English top flight that also wears in red and white, the Southampton FC –the team that caught the attention of Elorduy – was not at England’s top at the time and, in fact, did not make its Premier League debut until 1966. A decade later, the team won its only prestigious title, the FA Cup. The Saints went from the half-red and half-white shirt to the red and white in 1896, apparently driven by the large contingent of players born in Stoke-on-Trent who were in the line-up. And since 1910, our Club has continued to rely on this sporting garment thanks to Southampton, who became a rival of Athletic Club in the first round of the 1971/72 UEFA Cup, a qualifying round that ended up in favour of the lions.

*First red and white shirt with vertical stripes:
Wolverhampton Wanderers FC and Stoke (year 1883)

*First red and white suit and black pants and socks:
Wolverhampton Wanderers FC (year 1883)

*First match in red and white in the FA Cup:
Wolverhampton Wanderers FC (October 27, 1883)

*First match in red and white in the Football League:
Wolverhampton Wanderers FC and Stoke City (September 8, 1888)

*First red and white suit (and with black pants and socks) since the official registration of uniforms:
Sunderland AFC (September 5, 1891)

*Club by which Athletic Club took on its colours:
Southampton FC