History of Football Kits Continued
Post-War Period (1946-1959)
Numbered football shirts were first introduced In Scotland in 1946, but they didn’t become compulsory until the early 1960s. Celtic rather bizarrely insisted on wearing their numbers on the player’s shorts until relatively recently.
The effect of World War Two meant that clothing rationing limited the ability of clubs to replace their football kits and several were forced to change form their traditional football kit designs to ones they could either purchase with ration coupons or gain from other clubs. Football shirt laced necks nearly completely disappeared in favour of collared football shirts. Hooped socks became increasingly popular, but during the early fifties most clubs stuck to their traditional football kit designs.
The first pale football socks (stockings) appeared in the early 1950s and by the end of the decade white socks had become widely available and used by clubs in their football kits.
With European football now being introduced, continental influences on football shirts soon appeared. European teams were seen in new lightweight strips, featuring bold V-necks, short sleeves and more streamlined football shorts. There were several innovations in football kit designs, most notably the ‘candy-stripes’ first worn as change strips by Manchester City and Aston Villa in successive FA Cup finals (1956 and 1957 respectively).
By the end of the Fifties the heavy playing football kits and football boots of previous eras had vanished.
To continue the history of football kits please see the sixties and seventies (1960-1979).