So Liverpool FC have backed down in their bid to register the Liver Bird emblem as a trademark of the club.  This is due to the move being met with not insubstantial opposition and I have to say that I'm intrigued.

Liverpool City Council were preparing a legal counter to The Reds' application based on the fact that the Liver Bird is used as a symbol of the city in administrative and denotative capacities.  But Liverpool (and I mean the football club) made it very clear that the city would be welcome to use the bird as they already do, at no charge, and the action was simply being undertaken to have some legal footing when it came to the battle against unofficial Liverpool merchandise.  Currently the feeling is that non-affiliated shirts, footballs, scarves etc are being sold as competition to the "genuine" apparell and the like.  This is what Liverpool wanted to stamp out.

So Millwall have got a new shirt. And it's pretty good. Little wonder. It's orange.

Some of the best shirts have been orange (or "tangerine". It's the last time you'll see me call a shirt that) and it just makes a mockery of Graham Taylor's dislike of the colour. "Do I not like orange". Do I not like orange? Yes. Er, no. Yes I do like orange shirts.

Millwall have gone with the colour of kings, pseudo-literally speaking. The Dutch royal family is known as the House of Orange-Nassau and, despite what Graham thinks, Holland have had some of the best orange shirts over the years. Their 70s number was one of the first to feature adidas's three stripes down the sleeve. That is until Johan Cruyff got his hands on his and tore a stripe off in an apparent show of support of his sponsor Puma (Adi/Rudi Dassler etc). Unwittingly he created a two-striped classic and Puma have recently shown their appreciation in shirts such as this season's Spurs away.

In 1988 the victorious Dutch team of Rijkaard, Gullit & van Basten won the Euro with one of that period's most iconic kits and the patterned design has recently featured (inverted) in adidas's Originals range, despite the Dutch now having an equally superb Nike-manufactured kit. From the flag detail on the neck (echoing Ruud Gullit's horizontal tricolour captain's armband) to the beautiful socks in nassau blue (how many colours does that royal family want?!) Nike have created a masterpiece. Even the bizarre shirt numbers add to the effect.

Ok, so England actually won the game 2-1 and that, if anything, flattered the Germans.  But, whatever the British media will have you believe, the game really didn't matter that much.  It was a friendly between two teams whose players on the night have both bigger fish to fry in club football and more important international battles on the horizon.  Most of these players are too young to remember the 1990 World Cup (one of the only benefits of being old: I do) let alone 1970, 1966 or its melodically referenced companions the "two world wars" so it was an experimental exercise with little edge.

Ok, so if we wanna talk football, it was pretty good from an English point of view (which I occasionally have).  England attacked well, showed good movement off the ball and the likes of Shaun Wright-Phillips actually taking players on (successfully!) is a joy to behold.  Even the frankly odious John Terry did the decent thing and admitted he was the culpable party for the German goal and Gabi Agbonlahor made an impressive and loooong overdue debut (I've been demanding this for years.  Thanks for listening, Fabio).  Enjoy it while it lasts, England fans.  Really, Wednesday night you should have played the lottery, rung up Noel Gallagher to see if he needs another touring guitarist and asked out Keeley Hazell.  Things seemed to be going in your favour.

But the bigger victories went to the Germans.  Yep, I'm talking football design (humour me).  1-0 with the kit and with the stadium, a cracker, they made it 2.

The Mirror recently unveiled that David Beckham will wear the number 75 shirt at Milan.  If this is true then it's no great surprise (though I actually called 45 to continue the Michael Jordan theme) as Beckham's favoured numbers 7 and 23 are taken by Pato and Ambrosini respectively and DB7/23/75 was born in 1975.  In fact, and here's a surprise, it's a marketing masterstroke.

Players have been using more imaginative or high numbers for several years now.  Two great examples were Ivan Zamorano's inventive use of a plus sign to, in his own mind, continue wearing number 9 upon Ronaldo's arrival at Inter and Bixente Lizarazu's apparently erotic numbering on rejoining Bayern Munich.  The latter turned out to be an early example of the year of birth method and that's the current fashion at Milan (Google "Milan Fashion" and this'll no doubt prove me right).  

Shevchenko, Ronaldinho and Flamini have all recently been brought in and all wear their year of birth on their backs.  As a result, lots of fans also wear their (Shevchenko, Ronaldinho and Flamini's) year of birth so Beckham fits perfectly into this. Throw in the ever-secretive Sporting ID's club-specific fonts and numbering style and you have a late entry on a million Christmas lists.  Threefold.

The difference between the potential for shirt sales "on the back" of this deal compared with that of other deals is that this is temporary.  When a player moves the temptation may be to wait to see how the move works out.  No one wants a DIOUF 9 Liverpool shirt (I lie.  I had one on sale on jfh29er and it went.  Eventually) or a Balaban 19 Villa one but, while Beckham's not really expected to set the San Siro alight, crucially, he'd also have to go some to really blot his copybook in two months.  Beckham, his team, Milan and his bootmaker/sponsor adidas (it's not just convenient that it's Milan and not Inter or Juve) have engineered this move because people can buy into a piece of history.  You can complete your set with a Beckham 75 Milan shirt and, guess what, it never goes out of date because there'll only ever be one style that Beckham wore.

In the same way as your football team's shirts can each hold connotations of a period of your life, happiness or sadness, success or - dare we say it - failure, so can the history of matchballs. Since Mexico 1970 and the advent of the first World Cup televised in colour, adidas have always been the top dogs in creating spherical masterpieces. 12 black pentagons and 20 white hexagons screams Pelé and Brazil and every four years since there has been another released to whet the appetite for the forthcoming showpiece. 

By Jay

This week, English Premier League team West Ham United are due to announce that they will soon be wearing a new sponsor on their shirts. 

The sponsor, SBOBET, is a gambling company currently under investigation following match-fixing allegations. So pretty far removed from the Bobby Moore Fund, which West Ham's fans campaigned to be featured on the shirts.

From an aesthetic point of view, let's be honest about this, it's gonna be boring. Yet another soulless graphic advertising an organisation that (despite the disproportionately high amount of unethically opportunistic bookies in Newham) means precisely nothing to the supporters, plastered on shirts on the pitch and in the stands. The Bobby Moore Fund logo is not only what the fans wanted but is also a worthy cause and just looks better.