THE SARTORIAL ELEGANCE OF SERIE A: U.S. CREMONESE, 1992-95 [UHLSPORT]

 

As is often the case, Cremonese haven’t always worn their current colours. In 1903, the year the club came together, they wore white shirts adorned with a lilac collar, paired with black shorts and socks. Cremonese was a mere sporting association back then, and it’s not even certain they played any football. This changed in 1910, around the time they changed their name to Unione Sportiva Cremonese. Football was catching on, and the following year the team appointed a coach by the name of Nino Gandelli, with aim of playing the sport competitively. It seems he took the role seriously enough, recruiting the best local talent he could find, and by 1912 they'd signed up with the Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio (FICG).

Ahead of the 1913-14 Promozione, U.S. Cremonese merged with the recently formed Associazione Calcio Cremona. A new strip was in order, and it was towards the city’s heraldry that they looked for inspiration. Cremona’s coat of arms consists of a shield split down the middle, with silver and red horizontal stripes on one side and on the other a depiction of an arm holding aloft a golden ball. For now, the colours would do: grey shirts with red trim, to be worn with white shorts.

Cremonese’s first season was a success, winning promotion into the Prima Categoria at the first attempt. The following year’s campaign was mediocre, and when Italy joined The Great War in 1915 so did many of their players (most notably goalkeeper Giovanni Zini, who served as a stretcher-bearer but died in Cividale del Friuli in 1915 after contracting typhus).

In 1919, Cremonese assimilated another local team by the name of Football Club Aurora. Despite bolstering their ranks the club finished bottom of their six-team group, which ordinarily would have resulted in relegation back to the Promozione. The Prima Categoria was in effect a qualifying round whereby teams competed in regional divisions to gain entry into the national semi-finals. The regional committees operated with complete autonomy, determining how many teams over however many leagues were allowed to take part. Ahead of the 1920-21 season, rather than reduce the number of entrants, as the FICG and a few of the bigger clubs were keen to do, Lombardia elected to move from three groups of six to six groups of four, making room for Cremonese.

The next five years were spent playing in a restructured Prima Divisione. Then in 1926 tensions between the FICG and Confederazione Calcistica Italiana (CCI) finally gave way to the establishment of a national league, under the auspices of the (Fascist) Direttorio Divisioni Superiori (DDS). At the same time Cremonese embellished their grey shirts with a red cross, only to finish their group in ninth place. Once more, this should have been low enough to see them relegated, but an enforced merger between Sampierdarenese and Andrea Doria (albeit a temporary one) freed up and extra space.

In 1928 Cremonese tinkered with their strip for a third time, exchanging the cross for a horizontal stripe wrapped around the chest. Seventh place was enough to qualify for the preceding season’s inaugural single-group format – in other words, Serie A – from which they were immediately relegated. They continued to play in Serie B up until 1938, whereupon they dropped down into Serie C. In 1942 Cremonese returned to Serie B but were again relegated in 1951. For their 50th anniversary, they wore grey and red quartered shirts before finally settling for the stripes worn to this day.

 

The 1960s were spent playing in Serie C with the occasional foray into Serie D. The 1970s saw some improvement, culminating in promotion to Serie B in 1977 – the same season that saw Cremonese decked out in red shirts with a single grey stripe descending vertically from left shoulder. Relegation swiftly followed, but by 1981 they were back playing in Serie B.

In 1984 Cremonese finally made a return to Serie A after a 54 year absence. Unfortunately, the man who scored most of the goals that got them there – a certain Gianluca Vialli – was subsequently sold to Sampdoria. His replacement, the Brazilian forward Juary, made little impact and the club finished bottom of the table. But Cremonese appeared to have turned a corner and over the course of the next decade were promoted to Serie A on four separate occasions, oscillating between the top two tiers of Italian football. In the first instance their gear had been supplied by Puma. The second time around it was ABM (1988-89) and then Patrick (1990-91). For 1992-93’s successful push for promotion the kit was supplied by German sports manufacturer Uhlsport.

Uhlsport made shirts for a number of Italian football teams in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, most notably Inter and Bologna, as well as Verona and Brescia. They all came with collars, as did most shirts tailored towards the Italian market at that time. In truth, the jersey Uhlsport came up with was not so different to the ones that ABM and Patrick had provided before them. There were, however, a few compelling disparities.

First off, ABM and Patrick never bothered with appending the club’s crest. In ABM’s case, this may have come down to financial expediency, given that ABM were attaching crests to the shirts of Fiorentina, Torino, Pescara, Palermo. In any case, the absence of a badge cheapened the jersey. Moreover, Cremonese had redesigned their crest in 1985, and it was worthy of attachment: a simplified rendering of a golden ball held aloft, as depicted in the city’s coat of arms, with a diagonal red and grey bend (sinister) behind it. (When Uhlsport handed over to Puma in 1997, the club reverted to its traditional emblem.)

Second, the team’s sponsors during Patrick and ABM’s tenures did not present as nicely as the one that adorned the Uhlsport shirts – local retailer Moncart. It’s not that the company name was written in a particularly distinctive font, just that the simplicity of Moncart’s sans-serif, uppercase lettering worked well in this instance.

Finally, Uhlsport had recently discovered the art of micro-patterning. To be fair, this was a relatively recent phenomenon, and it’s debatable whether Inter’s shirt would have benefitted from it, but in the case of Cremonese it combined well with the colours, muting them slightly.
 

In 1995-96 cured-meat specialist Negroni took over sponsorship from Moncart, Enrico Chiesa returned to his parent-club, Sampdoria, and U.S. Cremonese were relegated. But I Grigiorossi had survived three consecutive seasons in Serie A, a feat not bettered by them before or since, and they did it wearing a shirt of some distinction.
 

THE SARTORIAL ELEGANCE OF SERIE A: U.C. SAMPDORIA, 1988-90 [KAPPA]

Unione Calcio Sampdoria’s iconic shirt was not contrived but fortuitously arrived at when Sampierdarenese merged with Andrea Doria in 1946. Sampierdarenese had worn white shirts with a red and black band around the middle, paired with black shorts and socks. Andre Doria’s strip consisted of a blue and white halved jersey, blue shorts and blue socks. A number of configurations were possible but the shirt’s creator opted for blue shirts with a white-red-black-white horizontal set of stripes around the middle and the stemma San Giorgio – ‘cross of St George’ – at its centre. This cross was also present on the shirts of Andre Doria. Whether Sampierdarenese’s fans felt aggrieved by this is not known. The symbol is a homage to the patron saint of Genoa, so maybe not.

In any case, in 1980 Sampdoria decided to introduce a proper club crest and came up with one of the most weird and wonderful emblems of its kind. For the uninitiated, the Baciccia, as it is known, depicts the silhouetted profile of a bearded sailor smoking a pipe, with blue, red and black stripes bending sinister behind him. So not only do Sampdoria possess one of the finest looking shirts in football but it might also be said they have the best badge.

For much of the 1980s sportswear manufacturer Ennerre was Italian football’s prevalent brand, supplying strips for Roma, Napoli, Fiorentina, Atalanta, Bologna, Sampdoria, among others. As the decade neared its end so too did Ennerre’s dominance. In 1988 Fiorentina turned to ABM for their gear, Bologna to Uhlsport, and Sampdoria to Kappa. (Napoli, Roma and Atalanta would remain affiliated with Ennerre until 1991.)

1987-88 had been a good year for Vujadin Boškov’s team, finishing fourth in the league and defeating Torino in the final of the Coppa Italia. Kappa’s first outing as Sampdoria’s kit supplier would therefore feature the coccarda – with red outer ring and green centre – sewn upon the left breast. Ordinarily this would have necessitated relocating the club’s badge to the shirt’s sleeve, except it was already there – had been since Ennerre moved it in 1981 for reasons unbeknown to anyone but them. Other distinguishing features included: the Kappa logo embroidered in white upon the right side of the chest; the slanted, uppercase font of new sponsor ERG sublimated above the jersey’s distinctive hoops; the shirt's number in black set against a white square; a thinly trimmed neckline and flared collar. (Unlike the shirts they were now providing for Juventus and A.C. Milan, Kappa saw no need to incorporate micropatterned textures.)

The partnership got off to a good start. Sampdoria retained the Coppa Italia, beating Maradona’s Napoli 4-1 over two legs, and made it to the final of the 1989 European Cup Winners’ Cup, losing to Barcelona in Bern. They finished Serie A in fifth place, one place down on the previous season, although 18 teams had competed for the title as opposed to the mere 16 the year before. Gianluca Vialli netted 14 goals, his highest return of his career thus far, Roberto Mancini scored 9, while Gianluca Pagliuca established himself as the club’s first-choice goalkeeper.

For 1989-90, the shirt remained the same in every respect bar two: numbers were now white instead of the black, rendering the white backdrop obsolete, and the coccarda's colours were inverted - i.e. green outer ring, red centre. The campaign would pan out very much like the last, with another fifth placed finish and a consecutive appearance in the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup. This time around Sampdoria were victorious, beating Anderlecht in Gothenburg courtesy of two extra-time goals from Gianluca Vialli, who was also the competition’s top goal scorer. Conversely, Sampdoria’s Coppa Italia challenge ended prematurely when Juventus knocked them out in the group stage.

Who could have predicted what was to happen next to the Genovese side? A quick word regarding personnel. In 1989 Vujadin Boškov had made two significant signings: the Italian winger Attilio Lombardo from Cremonese, and the Yugoslav defender Srečko Katanec from VfB Stuttgart. In 1990 the Ukrainian Oleksiy Mykhaylychenko replaced Victor Munoz in a midfield that also featured the play-making talents of Toninho Cerezo and Giuseppe Dossena. Pietro Vierchowod and Luca Pellegrini were solid in defence; Gianluca Vialli and striking partner Roberto Mancini were indomitable up front.

Meanwhile, Japanese sportswear manufacturer ASICS replaced Kappa as Sampdoria’s kit supplier. Or did they? Aside from the now absent coccarda, the shirt was ostensibly the same. I suspect that it was the same jersey and that Kappa had been subcontracted by ASICS to make shirts under their brand. Whatever sort of arrangement may or may not have been in place, ASICS was the main beneficiary for Sampdoria were about to win their first (and so far only) Coppa Campioni d'Italia, finishing ahead of both A.C. Milan and Inter by a comfortable five points. (Gianluca Vialli scored 19 goals – his highest tally in any one season – and Mancini added another 12.)

Apart for the scudetto that now adorned Sampdoria’s shirts, their kit remained little altered for the following season. Unfortunately, the club’s form did not. Sampdoria finished a disappointing sixth in the league and were knocked out of the Coppa Italia in the semi-final by eventual winners Parma. However, in what would be Boškov’s final year as manager, Sampdoria did make it to the final of the European Cup only to lose to Barcelona (again) after Ronald Koeman drilled home a free kick in extra-time from some 25 yards out. Interestingly, Sampdoria used this opportunity – or had the opportunity pressed upon them – to wear next seasons’ shirt. Gone was the slim-line V-neck and in it’s place was a snap-fastened collar. Hardly a radical change, but the damage was done.

 1988-89

From 1988 through to 1992 Sampdoria’s shirts were much the same. If the club hadn’t been winning trophies that brought with them symbolic, physical motifs – the coccarda and the scudetto – then anyone would be hard pressed to tell them apart. Fortunate, then, that this tenure coincided with what can be seen retrospectively as the high watermark in football apparel.

And yet Kappa/ASICS never showed quite the respect Sampdoria’s colours deserved. We can be grateful that the shirt was never micropatterned, which would have distracted from its extraordinary design. But at the very least they could have sewn the bloody badge on, as pretty much every other sportswear manufacture was doing at the time. Instead the Baciccia was subjected to dye-sublimation, which looked cheap.