So who should walk off with both honours? None other than our very own S-Pulse! Yep, we won both the best and the worst shirt award. So let's have a look at the competition we beat off to claim these crowns.
All images are from the excellent Rising Sun website which put the time and effort in to find them, upload them, and to run the polls.
The Best Ever J. League Shirt
There have been some classic shirts over the J. League's short history. The full poll for best ever kit, and competing shirts can be found here. Here I present my pick of the candidates:
Nagoya Grampus Eight (2002) - Complete with go-faster stripes
Cerezo Osaka (1995) - Respect is due simply for having a bright pink kit
Urawa Red Diamonds (1993) - Shiny!
Kawasaki Frontale (2008) - This came in second, but lost out to the belowThe Best Ever J. League Shirt Award Goes to...
S-Pulse (2002-03) - How I'd love to see a return to the days of world maps!
Lovely effort from S-Pulse, and it took 22.5% of the total vote. If only I'd been in the country a year earlier I could have had one of these for my own!
Well, now let's have a look at the J. League shirt hall of shame. There are some real works of art in the full poll which you can look at here. Again, here's my pick of the action!
Jubilo Iwata (1995) - Vile
Bellmare Hiratsuka (1994-96) - My eyes! My eyes!
Sanfrecce Hiroshima (1997) - Hiroshima go all Scottish to honour the arrival of Eddie Thomson as manager
Verdy Kawasaki (1993-94) - This actually makes me feel a little bit sickThe Worst Ever J. League Shirt Award Goes to...
S-Pulse (1993) - Words actually fail me :-D
Gloriously terrible! With a whopping 40.7% of the total vote, our 1993 away shirt trounced all opposition. What the designers were thinking (or what they were on) when they dreamt up this little beauty, I'd dearly love to know. If anyone has one they want to sell, do get in touch - I want one!
lacking individualism. Well, for a group of supporters who have grown up with the above shirts, I can, to a certain degree, see their point.The trend towards simplism is fine, but here's hoping that five or six years down the line we see a return to the garish and outlandish shirts of the mid nineties.
In the meantime, hold your heads up high S-Pulse fans, and wear your 90's shirts with even greater pride than usual - they're award winning!
They need to make an S-Pulse tartan shirt just for me.
ReplyDeletethat is pretty abysmal - and that goes for both the winning and losing shirts
ReplyDeleteBright orange tartan - come on S-Pulse, it has to be done! :)
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, even the "best" shirt isn't that great, but I so want us to go back to the map-of-the-world style for next year!
Hello there, I'm a French fan of Shimizu since 2005. I actually have the shirt that won the best shirt award (2002), and while it's really great looking, it's a bit frustrating because I can't wear it. Why ? Because the sponsors on this shirt (and on all the shirts from the 1997/2001 period) are fragile : they "burn" when you wash them (you can see that on some pictures of supporters, or on some old shirts sold on yahoo auctions). So, it's still good for collection, but if you ever get one, take care with the washing ! ;)
ReplyDeleteHi Tichmall!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your message. I've actually seen what you talk about on some of the shirts around Nihondaira. It's such bad design, isn't it!
I would like to get my hands on a classic old shirt, but if I do I'll be careful with washing it!
Barry