I don’t know how much you know about LA gang culture, but you may have heard of the Bloods and the Crips.
The Bloods famously dress in red and have a membership of around 20-25,000 people. This means they have more fans than Tranmere Rovers, and are probably better at playing football. The Crips, meanwhile, are endorsed by Snoop Dogg, have a bigger membership (Blackburn Rovers size) and like to dress in blue.
If you’re caught wearing red in a Crip neighbourhood, it’s not going to end well for you. Likewise, if you wear blue when visiting the home of a Blood you’re likely to leave with some new, painful, holes in your head.
Now I’m not saying that Bayern Munich’s 14/15 home shirt was an attempt to unify two warring factions…but it certainly couldn’t hurt.
Yes, Bayern had red and blue stripes living in harmony on their jersey that year, in homage to their footballing heroes, Crystal Palace.
Kidding. It’s actually a homage to their shirt from 95/96, the year they won the UEFA Cup. 1995 was also the year Bayern started printing the player names at the bottom of the shirt, below the club name and that order is not a coincidence. Bayern’s president, Uli Hoeneß, made it clear that while players may come and go, the club will always stay, which is why it gets top billing.
This shirt also features Bayern’s motto ‘Mia san mia’ printed on the back of the neck, which roughly translates as ‘We are what we are’.
Red and blue isn’t unheard of for Bayern. Previous to the aforementioned 1995 shirt, they had a red and blue Adidas template, similar to the Liverpool shirt we featured the other week. They continued the red and blue theme in their home kits into the early ‘00s.
However, the Bayern purists believed that blue had no place on their shirts, that blue was the colour of their bitter rivals the Crips 1860 Munich. This shirt is important because it marks the last time – possibly ever – that blue will feature on Bayern’s home shirts, as they bowed to fan pressure and banned all blue from 2018 onward.
Was blue a curse for them? Well, during the 14/15 season wearing this shirt their only silverware was the Bundesliga trophy. I say ‘only’ because in the previous season, wearing an all red strip, they won the Bundesliga, DFB Pokal, UEFA Super Cup and the FIFA Club World Cup, not to mention getting to the semi finals of the Champions League and the final of the DFL Supercup.
It was always going to be difficult to follow that, so we can’t blame the shirt. After all, they didn’t lose from August ‘14 to January ‘15 wearing it, and only lost to one team outside of the top 5 all season. But Bayern winning the Bundesliga is nothing special at this point. It’s like competing with Usain Bolt at a school sports day.
Overall, I think this is a great looking shirt. The colours are bright and vibrant, the white highlights are used to frame the shirt nicely. It’s a clean, modern looking design as you’d expect from Adidas and would make a great addition to any shirt collection. The Bayern Ultras may disagree however, so maybe don’t wear it around Munich.
Or in central LA, just to be safe.
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