It's Time to Bring Back the Giant Soccer Collar

Anton Want

I don’t care what your uncle says: In pretty much every way, professional sports have gotten objectively better since the ‘90s. The players are better, more talented, and more athletic. The television-watching experience has improved dramatically, and the internet has made it all more accessible. Still, as with anything, there are a few areas to improve. Last weekend, as I was at home watching the Liverpool-Manchester United game, I had a thought lodged deeply in my brain that I couldn’t get out.

These jerseys are boring as hell.

Don’t get me wrong—there are some teams around the Premier League that are taking some aesthetic risks, for better and for worse. But the biggest opportunity to really wow some people is sitting right there in plain sight. Just above the collarbone, as a matter of fact. It is high time to reject modernity, embrace tradition, and strap a comically large collar on soccer jerseys again.

A few clubs have revived the collar, but not to the degree that we really want to see. This Everton kit, for example, is a perfect demonstration of how a collar can really work.

But it’s not quite evocative enough of the collar’s golden years. I’m talking about the halcyon days of Zinedine Zidane and Eric Cantona wearing a veritable acre of fabric around their neck. This phenomenon spread in the 1990s, both for club and country.

Look, we’re not saying that just because it has a gigantic collar, the entire shirt is good. Manchester United need not wear yellow and green ever again. But there’s something about that Cantona collar that provides a bit of pizzazz, a huge contrast from the sleek, sanitized look that dominates the sport now. The ability to pop said collar—while much more advisable 30 years ago than it is now—also gives the players the chance to express themselves a bit fashion-wise! How else are you supposed to know which players on the field like to have a bit of fun sometimes? You’ll also notice in that photo of Zidane—taken at the 1996 Euros—that the collar has laces. Laces! That level of innovation simply does not exist right now, and that’s a tremendous shame.

There are surely plenty of reasons why soccer has moved away from this look. But it’s also fairly undeniable that adding a collar to the jersey makes it much more wearable for a fan. Not everyone wants to rock an expensive swath of slim-fitting athletic material to the bar. Sometimes you want a baggy polo shirt with a little room to breathe and a metric ton of collar up top. Of course, collars can take many different shapes and sizes too, which should give current uniform designers a lot of inspiration material. The v-neck collar, especially the one created for Nigeria’s men’s team in 1996, goes crazy.

The Americans had a hybrid look for the 1998 World Cup, fusing the huge collar with a plunging V-neck, which was perfect because it meant midfielder Brian Maisonneuve could show off this cool necklace.

We’re not asking for a full return to the entropy era that gave us Nottingham Forest’s headache-inducing tops from the mid-’90s, or the unforgettable Chelsea Coors cans. We are simply asking for soccer teams to get a little weird with it. There are so many ways to play around with the collar too, whether that’s putting logos on them or a funky team-colored design like Aston Villa did in the ‘70s. All we want is for some brave souls to at least try to bring the collar in a way that’s a little less safe, and a little more supersized. Because, really, has there ever been a bigger fit than this?

Originally Appeared on GQ