Home   >   Musings   >   The curious case of stars on club kits

The curious case of stars on club kits

By on September 4, 2014

When walking by the kit of Brazil’s national team, it is eye catching. Not just because of the vibrant colors or star studded names on the back, or the famous crest, but one of the lesser elements of the kit – the five stars above the crest. Immediately, you are reminded of Brazil’s dominance on the international level. When you look at Germany’s kit, with a new fourth star following the World Cup this summer, your mind is cast back to the 2014 World Cup and that epic final. Every star equals one World Cup win; only the most elite countries – eight, on the dot. Stars have become a byword for titles.

In club football, however, the rule varies wildly from country to country, for FIFA has no set rules on the matter, nor do continental confederations. In fact, per FIFA’s equipment regulations, section 18.2, the rule that applies for international teams “shall not apply to Clubs that have won one or more of the previous editions of the FIFA Club World Cup.” In other words, there is no star system regulated by FIFA, and UEFA only allows a permanent special badge of honor on the shirt sleeve of a kit if a team has won five or more European Cups, or the competition three years in a row.

Which is why in England, for example, there is no rule set in stone. Liverpool chose to wear five stars on their kit in the season following their fifth European Cup win back in 2005, and while Manchester City have had three stars on their kit ever since 1997, those are purely decorative and actually registered as part of their crest design. However, In Serie A clubs can wear one star on their kit per ten Serie A titles. The Turkish league set up a similar scheme in 2000, where every club gets one star per five titles, hence, Galatasaray wearing three stars on their jersey, and in Norway and Sweden systems identical to that in Italy have been adopted. As did the German Bundesliga, which installed a rule where a club can wear one, two, three, or four stars on their kit if they have won three, five, ten, or twenty titles since 1963. Currently, Bayern Munich, Borussia Monchengladbach, Borussia Dortmund, Hamburg SV, and Werder Bremen are the only clubs to have earned stars.

In America, MLS standardized a system in 2006, in which a club gets one star per MLS Cup victory, but the Dutch Eredivisie chose the same one star per ten titles system that is used widely throughout Europe. Yet the deeper you look, the more confusing stars in club football become, making it all the more ironic that the entire scheme was started by Juventus in 1958.

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.