Among the photographs shot by Mike Goldwater, who in the 1970s and 1980s documented the vernacular day to day life of the London underground, many are the scenes of young supporters amassed at the Wembley Park station on the occasion of the FA Cup finals – the most awaited event of the season in pre-globalised English football.
In London, football and the Tube nonetheless have a special bond. The distance between stops has determined, over the decades, derbies and rivalries, which come to life every time the trains transport thousands of home and away supporters on a matchday.
Among the many football teams of London, Arsenal are the only one to boast a Tube station named after the club. Back in 1932, then manager Herbert Chapman – the mastermind of the seminal 4-4-2 scheme and a figure who had understood, years and years in advance, the role that marketing would soon play in football – had lobbied to change the name of the Gillespie Road underground stop into Arsenal. The aim? Facilitating the journey of all those fans making their way to the game in the reticulate that is underground London.
Ninety years on, the team and Transport for London – the company running the public transport in the English capital – have teamed up to celebrate this unique legacy by creating in partnership with Adidas a capsule collection of pre-match gear.
The Barman moquette pattern, characterised by the repetition of the silhouettes of four London landmarks – the Big Ben, Tower Bridge, the London Eye and the Saint Paul’s Cathedral – which covers the seats of the Victoria Line on which is located the Arsenal stop, has now been reproposed across a t-shirt and a crew neck sweater. The fabric’s blue dominant palette, though, also includes shades of red and white, the colours of Arsenal and of the Underground logo, here reproduced on the back collar of the tops. A reversible puffer gilet and a pair of tracksuit bottoms complete the range, which debuted last night and that will be used for the pre-match warm up until the end of the season.
The icing on the cake, though, is an exclusive Oyster Card conceived by artist and Arsenal fans Reuben Dangoor, who portrayed the evolution of the station and of the club’s fans from 1932 to 2002.
However, the club is not new to reflecting on the theme of community and design. In 2020 Arsenal was part of the Adidas x Human Race charity project, which saw American rapper Pharrell Williams redesigning a series of iconic shirts of a range of clubs, including the Gunners and their 1991-93 Adidas away shirt – now a collectible. In the same season, Arsenal also wore an away shirt reproducing a marbled surface, a tribute to the foyer of Highbury, their historical home dismissed in 2006 and now respectfully converted into flats by maintaining the original structure and the pitch as a garden. The stadium, conceived by Archibald Leitch – one of Britain’s most revered sports architects – stood in fact as a distinguished example of British Art Deco.
Just a few weeks ago the club also stood up against the rise of gang feuds in London by dropping red from its shirt and wearing an all-white custom Adidas kit as part of the No More Red campaign. The shirt, which wasn’t made available to the public, was instead given to a series of figures who are making a positive impact in campaigning for the improvement of the local community.
The collaboration between Arsenal and TFL, hence, is another sign of the renovated interest sportswear brands are giving to architecture and architecture when designing their kits, as also recently witnessed with clubs such as Manchester City, Venezia, Inter Milan and Boca Juniors to name a few.
Opening image: The training gear designed by Adidas for the partnership between Arsenal and Transport For London. Photo Arsenal FC