Have you ever heard of the Umbro Cup?

The aesthetics of Umbro in the 1990s were mostly characterized by geometric patterns, a stylistic choice that the British company had decided to adopt from adidas. With the jersey created for the Netherlands at the 1988 European Championships and later for Germany at the 1990 World Cup, adidas had launched the trend of angular and geometric shapes in football - introducing the famous Ipswich template. This trend was fully embraced by Umbro, and even in a natural way since the company’s logo itself is a geometric pattern, a diamond shape with a smaller diamond inside. Umbro applied this vision in the design and production of all the jerseys for its sponsored clubs. In Italy, the most prominent examples of this trend are the collections made for Inter, Lazio, and Napoli.

Among the teams sponsored by Umbro at the time was also England, and from this connection, the legend of the Umbro Cup was born. Specifically, it was a competition organized by Umbro itself in the summer of 1995 to allow England to prepare in the best way for the 1996 European Championships that would be held in England, and which the Three Lions team, having missed the qualification for the 1994 World Cup, would play without having played an official match for 18 months. The event included England, Sweden, Japan (both sponsored by adidas), and Brazil, the reigning World Champion, with an Umbro jersey. A total of six matches were played across five different locations (London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, and Nottingham). At the end, a ranking was established to determine the winner, which was Brazil, who wore both Umbro kits during the tournament.

The classic yellow home jersey with green details, adorned with an embossed pattern that referenced the federation's logo, a pattern also repeated on the blue away kit, which replaced the design seen at the 1994 World Cup. In that case, the three-dimensional letters CBF (acronym for Confederação Brasileira de Futebol) were used on two offset levels, while along the shirt, a pattern of flags fluttering in the wind was developed, featuring the word Brasil. England also wore both kits during the tournament, the classic white home jersey and the traditional red away kit, enhanced with vertical bars where the repetition of the Umbro diamond provides an ornamental feel. Completing the design was the Football Association crest, repeated three times along a diagonal line in a pattern where the three crests first faced upwards and then downwards.

The success of the Umbro Cup was such that Umbro repeated the experiment in the summer of 1996 and 1997, again in England, this time involving club teams and rebranding the event as the Umbro International Tournament. In 1996, Nottingham Forest, Chelsea, Ajax, and Manchester United (all Umbro-sponsored teams) participated, while in 1997, in addition to Chelsea and Ajax, Everton and Newcastle also took part. Newcastle, at the time sponsored by adidas, participated in the event wearing the Umbro patch created exclusively for these two tournaments. Furthermore, the ball used for these two editions also reflected the geometric aesthetic of the time, as the classic Umbro ball, white with black diamond logos, was used. Looking back at those images, it’s impossible not to feel a sense of nostalgia for a football with a lighter touch. Let’s not misunderstand.

The spirit of those tournaments organized by Umbro was the same as that which today drives the organizers of international summer series: money. However, watching the highlights of these matches, there’s none of that sense of the exotic and distant that we usually feel today in the summer while catching up on the goals from a friendly match played on the other side of the world while having breakfast or lunch. It’s simply a clothing company, aiming to promote its football-related products, organizing a tournament with the best teams it has a sponsorship contract with. Less is more, a rule that applies to fashion as much as it does to football.