The Training Bib: Football's forgotten star

This is an ode to the unsung hero of the sports uniform world. Ignored by kit collectors and fans alike, the humble training bib has been an indispensable part of every football club’s sporting uniform since the beginning of time. From the amateur leagues right up to the highest level of the game, the oversized piece of mesh fabric, often in very garish colours has been worn by every player at every stage of their career. The bibs’ primary purpose is to distinguish players from one another, be it on the training ground or on the side of the pitch, forever playing second fiddle to the main act… the kit. It’s not a garment that would be desirable off the pitch, walking around town in a training bib is a tough ask– but as a graphic object there’s lots to be appreciated in something that has become a billboard for the multitude of club and federation sponsors. Many say that the 90s were the golden age of football jerseys, but there’s a better case for the 90s being the golden age for the bib. It’s also an era which gave us the Mona Lisa of training bibs: Barcelona’s in 1996, and it’s yet to be matched. 

Quite possibly the only time a club has been issued with a bib that was so intentionally designed, the oversized monochromatic beautifully cropped Barcelona crest commands attention, outshining even the superstars that wore it in those two seasons. The best that Romario, Ronaldo and Guardiola ever looked in training. Available in three colourways including a bright pink and blue combo, these bibs have become very hard to find, not least because they were never available to buy and only issued for players to wear. Although much less designed than Barcelona’s, the bibs of that golden era benefitted from the great array of beautifully designed (and very oversized) sponsor logos flooding the game at the time, Brazil with Coca-Cola, Milan and Opel, Maradona’s Napoli with Buitoni & the Italian national team frequently displaying Italia Petroli. A good sponsor logo is what often makes or breaks a kit and this era had plenty of recognizable ones - the bib had never looked better.

The training bib of today has largely become a victim to modern sports and brand design, they’re never sold, so little if any design thought goes into their creation. As their primary purpose is to carry sponsor logos it is suffering from the current era of design which lacks the romance that logos from yesteryear benefitted from. Not to mention the fact current football sponsors aren’t the iconic household names we saw in the previous era of the game. Will the bib have another comeback? I hope that one day it does, after all it’s probably the last piece in the football equipment bag to be given a full trendy makeover. However, the fact it is a purely functional item with very little use off the pitch makes that hard to imagine. But we can always fondly remember those two seasons in the mid-90s that Barcelona, for reasons no-one really knows, had a set of training bibs that out-shone their actual match kits.