The 20 best retro and modern football shirts to wear this summer

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Instantly recognisable retros to modern classics

With its association with warm weather, cup finals and far-flung tournaments, football in summer has a special feeling. Whether or not you’re celebrating a famous victory or not though, you can still show your colours during the summer months.

As the weather heats up, we’ve compiled some of the best football shirts to wear in summer, from cult classics to bestsellers to less well-known kits from across the world.

Shop: 20 best kits for summer

Italia ‘90 is remembered as one of the best tournaments, and that was especially true for England fans. A young Gazza had the world at his feet and helped inspire England to their first World Cup semi-finals since the glory of 1966. Arguably the main success story, though, was New Order’s which had arrived just before the tournament started and featured the now-iconic rap from John Barnes.

Throughout the video, New Order frontman Bernard Sumner wore England’s light blue third shirt. The jersey’s tonal diamond pattern and musical heritage cemented it as a cult classic, even if the England team rarely wore it.

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At the start of the 2021/22 season, Ajax and adidas decided to celebrate one of the club’s anthems, Bob Marley’s While it might seem like an incongruous choice, the song has been associated with Ajax since 2008, when it was played by a Cardiff City DJ after a friendly.

Designed to honour the fans’ enthusiasm for the song, Ajax released a black kit complete with Jamaica-inspired red, yellow and green detailing. Finishing off the design were three little birds on the back of the neck. Although UEFA forced Ajax to remove the three-bird motif, the shirt still sold out almost instantly.

Ahead of the 2018 World Cup, there was one kit that everyone was talking about. Nigeria’s shirt for the tournament featured a zig-zag pattern in light green and white across the chest, with a black and white version on the sleeves. Unsurprisingly, the shirt broke records – making it difficult to find nowadays – with 3 million pre-orders and a long queue outside Nike’s London store.

Nike clearly knew they were onto a winner and continued to reissue the shirt over the coming months and years. The brand even carried the design onto boots and trainers, while the shirt was also nominated for the Beazley Design of the Year award.

Described as the “world’s coolest club,” Italian team Venezia launched their 2021/22 away kit to widespread praise before the last season. The design pays tribute to the city of Venice with a repeated triangle pattern inspired by the city’s tile mosaics.

The stand-out feature of the shirt, though, was the gradient-effect across the shirt. With a cream base acting as an understated background, the triangle motif shifted between Venezia’s orange, black and green colours as it moved across the shirt. Bellissimo.