It’s a fact that a great sponsor can elevate a football shirt to god-like status. Think Coca-Cola on a Palmeiras shirt, the Newcastle Brown Ale logo on that mid-90s Toon jersey or Mars splashed across Diego Maradona’s chest during his time in Naples.

However, there are also plenty of otherwise decent jerseys that have been ruined by the ugly addition of a grotty sponsor. We’ve picked ten to make your eyes bleed – a collection of good kits trashed by bad corporate design.

But before we jump into it, some facts for you. Did you know that the first shirt with a sponsor was that of Eintracht Braunschweig in 1973, who carried Wolfenbüttel-based liquor producer Jägermeister on their tops? Or that in England, Coventry City were the first club to wear a sponsor, beginning in 1974 when Talbot featured on their kits? Not a trick is it, knowledge.

 Right, enough of that - let’s dive in.

10 - Napoli 2013/2014

Urghh, that Lete sponsor is truly horrible. The font is fine but it’s the insistence on retaining the white text on red background that really makes this one stink harder than microwaved roadkill.

9 - Lyon Away 2011/2012

On initial inspection, this one doesn’t seem so terrible. Solid font that takes the same tone of gold from the three stripes on the sleeve. It all looks fine. Until it dawns on you that Lyon’s change shirt appears to have become the WORST CASINO IN THE WORLD, the sort of place you stumble into at 4am on a stag do in Blackpool only to instantly regret the life choices that led you to this moment. Horrendous.

8 - Nurnberg Away 2007/2008

This shirt is bad regardless of the sponsor and was surely designed by someone with a serious ketamine problem. Add mister*lady (sounds a bit Partridge, doesn’t it? Ooooh, Mister Lady, shall I dance for you?) into the mix and you have a frothing litre of turd cocktail.

7 - Atalanta Home & Away 2013/2014

Fuck me, that’s bad. That Axa font is an affront to graphic design and the blue background only adds an additional dollop of shite to the logo, which is spectacularly awful when paired with an otherwise nice looking yellow and black away kit.  

6 - FC Wacker Innsbruck 2018-2019 

If you strip away the three sponsor logos from the front of this bad boy, it’s a really, really nice shirt. But, as the old adage goes, if my auntie had bollocks, she’d be my uncle. So let’s deal with the reality. And the reality is this hot mess. What even is TIWAG? Who knows? Who cares?

5 - Stade Rennais 2021-2022

Remember when you were at school and you learnt to do that ‘S’ design thing by drawing three vertical lines above another three vertical lines and then linking them all up? That surely was the inspiration for this Samsic (no, us neither) logo, which has totally ruined a football shirt. Nice one, Samsic, Stade Rennais’s crying.

4 - Udinese 2018-2019


 

Picture this for a moment without that blue DACIA crap and the green VORTICE nonsense and imagine how bloody great it would be. Instead, we are left with this affront to aesthetics and decency.

3 - Southampton 2019-2020 Home

The kit designers at Under Armour must have wept into their sketch books when they realised they had to stick this horror show on the front of their beautifully-crafted Saints shirt back in 2019. A year later, Southampton announced an abrupt end to their arrangement with LD Sports, revealing that the Chinese brand was no longer an “appropriate and viable partner”.

2 - Bologna 2022-2023 Home

At first sight, not a whole lot wrong with this Bologna shirt. However, the Italian speakers out there will know that ‘cazzo’ means dick or cock. Which is funny. And not something you want on the front of your team’s shirt. 

1 - Wolves 2021-2022 home

Remember the good old days when Wolves were sponsored by Goodyear, or, errrrr, Chaucer Consulting? A simpler time, that’s for sure. Back in the 2021/22 campaign, the old gold welcomed a new corporate logo, this time belonging to faceless online bookie ManBetX. Google the brand and you’ll quickly find an article entitled ‘Are ManBetX the worst online bookmaker?’. As puritans, we don’t spend our money on gambling so we couldn’t possibly comment but we are happy to opine that their logo might just be the worst thing since James Corden’s carpool karaoke.