Continuing with our tales from the design room, this week I had a chat with Kev our product development manager. Kev has worked for Umbro for the past 37 years (the second longest time of any current employee) and was actually with the company at the time when the founder of Umbro, Harold himself still worked in the building.

Kev: I’ve been here 37 years. I came into the business because I wanted to be a professional footballer but I was never going to do that. Umbro was in the town [Wilmslow] that I lived so I knocked on the door and because I always interested in football and was never going to make the grade so I thought to get involved with somebody associated with football. Luckily they gave me a job. Having done a few things, I got a job in the buying office – getting fabrics etc. for our manufacturing.

I started in ’72 but probably ’78 is when I started working on kits and fabrics. Remember back then jerseys were just cotton tees.

Tom: So lets get down to business then.. There was recently an article in the guardian about the six worst football kits of all time which featured a few of ours. Can you shed any light on how these shirts came to be?

Scotland away football shirt (1991-1993)

Kev: We got hammered for that! The designer came up with it and the idea came from somebody saying you could do whatever you wanted with an away shirt – so he did.

At the time the trend was to make shirts without any shoulder seams (if you look, you can see it is made from one piece of fabric). The whole front was cut and then the design was printed.

England Third Shirt (1991-93)

Kev: This is another shirt with no shoulder seams. This process of printing gave us the opportunity to put more on the shirt than just a stripe, for example.

The process meant people went wild because they could. These shirts were made from polyester so they could take a print whereas in the past the jerseys were cotton and they couldn’t take print. Nylon also didn’t take prints very well. So polyester came and revolutionised football kits because it was easy care, you could get great colours with it, they don’t fade, can handle being put in the washing machine – suddenly you could do a lot more with it, including printing. It opened up a can of worms as far as design was concerned.

England Away Shirt (1996-1997)

Kev: With this one we had people coming to the door at Wythenshawe and wanting to know why we changed it from red to grey. The papers had fuelled it up a bit because we’d moved away from the traditional red. It was very unpopular so much so we just went back to a red kit the following season.

Manchester United Football Shirt (1997-1998, goalkeepers)

Kev: With ‘keeper kits we were given license to do pretty much what we wanted. The printing processes just made possibilities limitless.

Tom: So that’s enough of the more controversial shirts . What’s your favourite kit that you have worked on?

Manchester United Football Shirt (home, 2000-2002)

The United wool shirt was great. It was the first time wool had been used in a football jersey. It was just something different, it felt different, the players liked to wear it.

England Football Shirt (Home, 2001-2003)

Kev: I think that’s one of our iconic kits. It changed the direction of the home kits – adding the red to it. Much like the New England kit has changed the direction again. I think the new England kit is brilliant.

Tom: That’s all from Kev for now but we will be back soon with more info from the guys that work on the shirts.