Celtic Football Club 2010/11 Home Shirt

Nike hid a tribute in plain sight on this shirt: inside every green hoop runs a tonal pattern of Celtic knots and crosses, the ancestral art that gives the club its name woven into the very cloth. On the chest, Tennent's made its debut, the Glasgow lager brewed at Wellpark since the eighteenth century, the city's beer on a shirt that belongs to half the city. The 2010/11 season, Neil Lennon's first full campaign in charge, was among the tensest in recent history: the title slipped to Rangers by a single point on the final day, in a championship fought to the millimetre and poisoned off the pitch, with Lennon himself the target of threats that went far beyond football. Consolation came at Hampden, the Scottish Cup lifted after a 3-0 win over Motherwell. And the design had a second life with a happy ending: in 2011/12, in these same hoops, Celtic reclaimed the championship while the Ibrox rivals sank towards liquidation. A shirt drawn with ancient art for two years in which British football's oldest rivalry changed forever.

Here at Hoopster this shirt hurts and enchants in equal measure: Celtic art woven inside the hoops and a title lost by one point on the final day. The most beautiful pieces do not always tell the happiest seasons.