Basically, the football jersey is everything a team stands for; it represents the very soul of the team.
Football kit has evolved significantly since the early days of the sport when players typically wore thick cotton shirts, knickerbockers and heavy rigid leather boots.
In the 20th century, boots became lighter and softer, shorts were worn at a shorter length, and advancements in clothing manufacture and printing allowed shirts to be made in lighter synthetic fibres with increasingly colourful and complex designs.
With the rise of advertising in the 20th century, sponsors' logos began to appear on shirts, and replica strips were made available for fans to purchase, generating significant amounts of revenue for clubs and national teams.
National team colours are often chosen according to the country’s national colours. For instance, in Ghana our national colours are red, gold, green and a black star.
The Black Stars jersey has also evolved from the Gold Coast era to contemporary times, with players sporting different jerseys of different brands at various major international tournaments such as the African Cup of Nations (CAN) and the FIFA World Cup.
For the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, the Stars will be sporting an all-white outfit manufactured by PUMA as the home jersey and partly black football kit instead of a kit that co-ordinates with the colours of the Ghana national flag, as in the team's crest and in general, Pan-African colours.
The Black Stars’ first kit colour choice has been all white from the years 1950 to 1989, and an introduction of a second kit colour to co-ordinate with the national flag of Ghana was worn from the years 1990 to 2006, designed with the national colours - gold with red and green - visibly decorated on them.
The kit design was also used in the 60s, 70s and designed with vertical stripes gold-green and red shoulders with the introduction of an all-black third kit in 2008 aligning the team's symbol of continuity.
Interestingly, some of the jerseys have had their own fair share of endorsements and rejections by football lovers.
For instance in 2006, football fans in Ghana rejected the all-black jersey used by the team against Zimbabwe in a group match at the Africa Cup of Nations tournament in Egypt.
Coincidentally, Ghana lost to Zimbabwe and this immediately provoked an uproar from Ghanaians who claimed the black jersey had a bad omen. It was the first and last time Ghana wore that ‘taboo’ jersey.
On June 16, we will be clothed in the white home jersey and we hope it works magic for us.
