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  You can complete your set with a Beckham 75 Milan shirt and, guess what, it never goes out of date because there'll only ever be one style that Beckham wore.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.

Welcome to DesignFootball.com.

This website has been set up in 2008 by FootballShirtCulture.com to offer a chance for amateur designers to showcase their work in football design. 

Based on the popularity of the Football kit Concepts section of our sister site FSC and the fantasy shirts scattered across football fansite forums worldwide, we knew this was something that was of great interest and Fantasy Kit Design also showed us the talent and imagination that is out there.

Our idea was to give designers a platform from which to expose their work and also create a community where ideas can be shared.  Through galleries and the blog we hope to facilitate the formulation of ideas and initiate debate concerning all areas of football design. 

Eventually, through links to the football design industries, we also hope to become a stepping stone to a related career for many of our contributors.

We will cater for all football designers, whether your interest lies simply in creating kit concepts or your long-term aim is to be working for one of the large football apparel manufacturers, this is the site for you.  Whatever your goal, interest, standard or style, DesignFootball.com is your site!