Do Football Players wash or rewear their Jerseys?
Well, to be frank, the answer depends largely on the level of the game the player is at.
At the elite level, matchday jerseys are almost never washed for reuse. In fact, top clubs provide two or three fresh shirts per player per match. One for the first half, a potential half-time change, and a spare for blood or heavy staining.
The reason is nothing serious. It is partly practical, partly commercial.
Sponsor visibility on television requires kits that look sharp under floodlights throughout the full ninety minutes.
Club's kit deals are worth hundreds of millions. They are not optimally fit for purpose when they are creased, faded.
Sometimes, after the final whistle, those jerseys enter a whole new world of their own. Some go to opponents in the post-match swap tradition that has existed for decades. Others go to fans, to charity auctions, or into a player's personal collection.
Players themselves almost never wash a single one, and that is entirely by design. Clubs have a kitman that handles everything: collecting dirty training gear, laundering base layers, and making sure fresh kits are ready for the next session.
Some players have cultures of their own too.
John Terry took it even further with boots, reportedly wearing three separate pairs per match. One for warmup, another for the first half and a third for the second half. If you are wondering what happens in knockout games that spillover into extra time, don't worry. You are not alone. I am wondering too.
The story is however very different further down the football pyramid. Players in smaller clubs wash and reuse the same pool of jerseys across multiple games simply because the budget does not allow for anything else.
The 2020 COVID lockdown gave a rare glimpse of this gap: Manchester United players were asked to take their training kits home and wash them themselves, something many of them had genuinely never done before in their professional careers. Not because they were lazy. Just because it had never been their job.
And yeah-the unsung heroes in all of this are the kitmen. They arrive earliest, leave latest, and make sure every player walks out looking exactly right. Some of them are the ones that do the actual cleaning.
Have you learned something today?
My name is Ajoje and I am a FIFA Licensed Agent and International Sports Lawyer. I talk about the Law and Business of Football, a lot. Repost and Follow me if you want to read more posts like this.
The least qualified person in our department got made Director on a Monday morning. No interview. No shortlist. Just an email with her name and a new title. By Friday every private office chat had been leaked to the Board. Every single one. Except hers.
These kind of men may have low sperm counts, lost focus in life, weak erection and do not last more than 30 seconds when they finally get their hands on a woman! A typical red flag 🚩 🚩🚩🚩
A wife decides to take her husband, Dave, to a strip club for his birthday...
They arrive at the club, and the doorman says, "Hey, Dave! How ya doin'?"
His wife is puzzled and asks if he's been to this club before.
"Oh no," says Dave. "He's on my bowling team."
When they are seated, a waitress asks Dave if he'd like his usual and brings over a Budweiser.
His wife is becoming increasingly uncomfortable and says,"How did she know that you drink Budweiser?"
"Shes in the Ladies Bowling League, honey. We share lanes with them."
A stripper then comes over to their table, throws her arms around Dave, and says, "Hi Davey. Want your usual table dance, big boy?"
Dave's wife, now furious, grabs her purse and storms out of the club.
Dave follows and spots her getting into a cab. Before she can slam the door, he jumps in beside her.
He tries desperately to explain how the stripper must have mistaken him for someone else, but his wife is having none of it.
She is screaming at him at the top of her lungs, calling him every name in the book.
The cabby turns his head and says, "Looks like you picked up a real bitch tonight, Dave.
A girl in the elevator told me my scent smelled great and asked what cologne it was.
I said, “Thanks, but isn’t this too manly for you?”
She replied it’s for her boyfriend.
I answered, “Why make him smell like me when you could just have me?”
I must say, Kevin De Bruyne in this position would pull out a pass that would leave both the defender and the keeper for dead. Such was his quality.
We will never find another like him.