Yesterday a leaked ad from Adidas hit the internet, roiling and enthralling all of us Arsenal supporters. Our new kit manufacturer and their ad agency – Iris Worldwide – pulled all the strings in the film. Global star players, historic icons, fallen heroes, the team members mostly overdubbed (not you, lovely Hector!) with London accents in a funny, smartly emotional, yet deftly un-cynical pitch for the new style.
A new kit is symbolic, and purposeful. It offers us a distraction – if momentarily – from the mire in which we are stuck. It offers us escape: we can literally put on the uniform of someone else and imagine ourselves as professional athletes, as progenitors of our own vision for the team.
A shirt is one of the first significant items we obtain as a small child to show our allegiance, and it’s one of the very few things we will buy until we are wizened, elderly. There’s (strangely) no stigma to remaining that excited child, play-acting an athlete even at the age of 50 or older.
A kit, new or old, also joins us to others. At a game we see dozens of other Bellerins, and we immediately know we share something. We see a Mesut Ozil grabbing a pint at the concession stand and we know that fan also loves the player amidst all the polarizing critique. Cynically, it’s merchandise, a cash source for a club in dire need of said cash. Romantically, though, that kit is also part of us, part of our personality. The excitement of the new reaffirms us as part of a broad and diverse community, as part of a group of people who (mostly) share a common desire: to see those shirts sweated in, covered in dirt, and up on the balcony with a medal draped over the front, shirtsleeves lifting a trophy in the air.
Well done, Adidas. That uniform has sprung just a touch of hope, perfectly timed.