Best football jerseys in history: Here are the Rankings
Ask ten football fans for the greatest shirt ever made and you'll get ten arguments. That's the fun of it. A truly great kit is never just fabric and a badge — it's tied to a player, a moment, a season that refuses to fade. This is our ranking of the best football jerseys in history, spanning both club and country, judged on design, cultural impact, and the weight of the memories attached.
We've leaned on the classics that fans and collectors keep coming back to. Disagree with the order? Good — that's the point.
How we ranked them
Three things separate a great shirt from a merely nice one:
- Design that still holds up — a kit you'd happily wear today, decades on.
- The moment it's tied to — a goal, a trophy, a player who made it immortal.
- Cultural reach — shirts that escaped the terraces and became part of fashion and pop culture.
The best football jerseys in history, ranked
1. Brazil 1970
The canary-yellow shirt of Pelé's Brazil is the benchmark every other kit is measured against. It was the first World Cup beamed widely in colour, and that yellow burned itself into football's collective memory. Simple, perfect, untouchable.
2. Argentina 1986
Diego Maradona dragged Argentina to the trophy almost single-handedly, and the sky-blue-and-white stripes went with him. The darker blue change shirt he wore against England — two of the most famous goals ever scored — is one of the most mythologised garments in the sport.
3. Inter Milan 1997–98
Ronaldo at his unstoppable peak, the classic blue-and-black stripes, the Pirelli sponsor and that clean Nike cut. For a generation this is the club shirt — proof that Serie A in the late nineties was the best-dressed league on earth.
4. Netherlands 1988
The abstract geometric orange of Van Basten and Gullit's European Championship winners is a design icon. Bold, strange, and unmistakably Dutch — still reissued and copied to this day.
5. Arsenal 1991–93 (the "Bruised Banana")
Yellow with a navy zigzag scrawl, the away shirt fans nicknamed the bruised banana is one of the most divisive and beloved kits ever made. It defines a whole era of early-nineties design bravery, and originals now sell for serious money.
6. West Germany 1990
The black, red and gold chevron sweeping across the chest, worn by the side that lifted the World Cup in Italy. Few kits balance national identity and clean design as well as this one.
7. Napoli 1987–88
Maradona's Napoli, the sky-blue shirt with the Buitoni sponsor, tied forever to the only era a southern Italian club ruled Serie A. Romantic, rare, and endlessly collectable.
8. Denmark 1986
Danish Dynamite's half-and-half pinstriped hummel kit is pure eighties flair. The team flamed out, but the shirt became immortal — a cult classic that still turns heads.
9. Nigeria 2018
The Super Eagles' Nike shirt became a genuine cultural phenomenon, selling out almost instantly and crossing over from football into streetwear. Proof that a modern kit can become a classic the moment it drops.
10. AC Milan, early 1990s
The red-and-black stripes of Sacchi and Capello's all-conquering Milan — Maldini, Baresi, Van Basten — represent one of the greatest club sides ever assembled. The kit is as understated and authoritative as the team that wore it.
11. Marseille 1993
The white shirt in which Marseille became the first French club to win the European Cup. Clean, crisp, and loaded with history — a connoisseur's pick.
12. Celtic hoops
No single year — the green-and-white hoops are timeless. Few shirts in world football are as instantly recognisable, or as bound up with a club's identity, as Celtic's.
The shirts that just missed
Plenty of greats didn't make the cut: Manchester United's 1998–99 treble kit, Barcelona's Dream Team blaugrana, France 1998, Mexico's Jorge Campos goalkeeper kits, and Borussia Dortmund's 1997 Champions League shirt. The beauty of a list like this is that yours would look different — and you'd be right too.
For a deeper dive into the international side of things, our guide to the most iconic World Cup shirts from every tournament goes tournament by tournament. And if you're wondering how these old kits became wardrobe staples, we covered exactly that in how football shirts became streetwear.
How to start your own collection
Here's the catch with the all-time greats: the best ones are expensive, hard to find, or both. That's exactly why mystery boxes have taken off — they're the low-cost, high-fun way to build a collection in directions you'd never choose yourself.
A mystery football shirt box sends you a hand-picked shirt at random — any club, country or era. Every shirt is 100% genuine and officially licensed, and part of the joy is pulling a kit you'd forgotten you loved. Over 200,000 shirts have shipped to fans worldwide, and plenty of them are exactly the kind of classics on this list.
Frequently asked questions
What is the greatest football shirt of all time?
Brazil's 1970 canary-yellow shirt is the most common pick, thanks to Pelé and its status as the first World Cup widely seen in colour. Maradona's 1986 Argentina shirt and Inter Milan's 1997–98 kit run it close.
Why are old football shirts so collectable?
Because they tie a specific design to a specific moment — a player, a goal, a trophy. That provenance is what turns a shirt from "nice" into a genuine piece of football history.
What's the best way to start a football shirt collection?
A mystery football shirt box is one of the easiest entry points — you get a genuine shirt at random without paying collector prices, and the surprise often introduces you to clubs and kits you'd never have bought yourself.
The verdict
Great football shirts outlive the matches they were worn in. They become the way we remember players, seasons and feelings — which is why a list like this can never be settled. Build your own, argue about it, and enjoy the chase. The best place to start is the next box you open.