Get set to crack out the gaudy memorabilia and dust down your ear piercing vuvuzela, it’s football World Cup time and boy are we excited for the Sunday afternoons roasting like a suckling pig in the pub garden sun as a dimly lit projector beams Japan versus Senegal onto a garden shed. This coming World Cup has coincided with a rising interest in football kits, and more specifically classic football shirts from the 1980s and 1990s with retro geometric designs becoming as prevalent to the streetwear crowd as the various teams playing in Russia this summer. “Classic shirts are great for business-as-usual league games, but this historic sporting event calls for a major dollop of flamboyance,” says Simon Doonan, creative ambassador-at-large of New York City-based clothing store Barneys and author of Saturday Night Fever Pitch: The Magic and Madness of Football Style. “Throwing a player into a tasteful solid shirt in a spiffy color is simply not enough.” According to Doonan Argentina’s winning vertical blue and white stripes shirt from 1978 is a prime example of a World Cup shirt done right. “Vertical stripes – especially like the historic black and white classic shirts of Newcastle and Juventus – never fail to make players appear invincible, and most important, slender.” To mark the occasion of this coming World Cup we have decided to rank the kits from the World Cup from best to worst, with Doonan by our side as our resident football shirt pundit.

Belgium

The country that gave us French fries (confusingly) and waffles, much to the chagrin of our waistlines, has now given us quite possibly the most beautiful football shirt in the history of the game. From the elegant royal crest placed bang in the middle to the understated 1980s-influenced geometric pattern and the bold rouge, this is simply majestic. Doonan points out that the emblazoned pattern is very similar to the Scottish argyle diamond, mentioning its place in footballing history: “The Argyle recalls the era – back in the last century – when footballing casuals adopted the argyle pattern as an FU to the golfing upper-classes. It’s fabulous.”