Kit Chronicles

The crest is permanent. The name on the other side of the shirt is not. Every major club — and every national team — has passed through the hands of more than one manufacturer over the decades — three stripes giving way to a swoosh, a swoosh giving way to a leaping cat, each deal lasting anywhere from a single season to almost thirty years; every entry below marks a genuine manufacturer change, not a re-signing (a handful, where only one deal is on record, instead mark the first known manufacturer), sorted chronologically, newest first, each one dated to the year the deal took effect.

A handful of these deals were decades long — Milan and Adidas ran from 1999 to 2018, Chelsea and Umbro from 1988 to 2006 — while others barely lasted a season before a bigger offer arrived. A few clubs have gone back to a brand they already left once: Lyon returned to Adidas in 2011 after an eight-year spell in Umbro, and Fenerbahçe has cycled through Adidas three separate times since 1989. The shirt changes hands; the badge on it never does.