Art and football might not be the type of thing you see together all that often, but they were certainly getting up close and personal recently at Umbro’s design studio in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. That’s because the Royal College of Art were in town, displaying some of the ideas they came up with for a project developed in conjuction with Umbro.

Last year, Umbro asked students at the College to come up with ideas based around sport, technology and Britishness, with the results being understandably varied. The best projects were developed and displayed at the Dale Street studio recently, and it’s these ideas which feature in this Flickr gallery we’ve put together. Obviously, these ideas are a long way from the football shirts and sportswear that we put onto the pitch, but there are some links between the two oif you look close enough. Whether it’s football boots produced using the same technique as that which goes into making cars, or jumpers that make it easier to explain the offside rule, this collection from the RCA underlines just how much football is ingrained into our culture.