A football club’s kit is an invaluable asset to their supporter. It is as important to them as it is for the actual football for the team’s players.
Fans wear the threads because it fills them with a sense of pride in representing their favourite club. The culture and history associated with the team are portrayed in the colours and the crests of the respective shirts.
It’s very rare to see any kind of blunders made by the designers when a jersey or any club-related apparel goes on sale but there have been a handful of errors where someone messed it up, badly.
Aston Villa is a 148-year-old club in the English footballing pyramid. They are currently battling for survival out in the wilderness of the Premier League but things aren’t too rosy for them.
Languishing at 16th on the table with just a point’s cushion from the relegation zone, the club had made a massive mistake which could have gone unspotted, except for a man with a keen eye for detail.
On Villa’s online club shop, the “Iconic Defender T-Shirt – Blue Wing Teal” was listed at £25. What Twitter user @doc3d noticed was a small logo of Everton was stitched at the bottom of the training shirt.
An Aston Villa merchandise with Everton’s famous badge. Yikes!
He immediately took to the social media platform to point out the error with screenshots from the official site, tagging the club’s Twitter account in his tweet.
A busload of other users have reacted to the seemingly honest fallacy, and one even posted a picture of a soft toy with a similar product defect.
This is not the first instance where a club has messed up their logo on apparel or any other item.
Way back in 1997, David Beckham wore a misspelt jersey against Chelsea for Manchester United.
A Wolverhampton Wanderers fan once received the club’s jersey after buying from their credible online store, only to have the logo printed upside down.
The apology he got from the club though, is one-of-a-kind!
Puma’s third kit for Borrusia Dortmund during the 2021-2022 season did not even have the club’s badge anywhere on the shirt which caused a huge uproar among the fans and later, the sportswear giants had to issue an apology.
Rivals Adidas weren’t spared either as ahead of the Copa America in 2016, they sent out some advertisements to promote Colombia’s new colours. Instead, they ended up hyping up “COLUMBIA”, much to the surprise of the South American nation’s fans.
These incidents indicate that everyone is a human being after all. A club’s supporters may forgive a bad match, but they will not forget a mistake made on their club’s apparel, especially on the official sites.