Celtic Football Club 2013/14 Home Shirt

In 2013 Celtic celebrated 125 years since their first match, and Nike designed a shirt that looks back to the beginning: instead of the usual broad hoops, clusters of fine pinstripes evoking the shirts of the early twentieth century, when the hoops themselves were still a recent novelty. Inside the collar, hidden from onlookers and pressed against the wearer, a phrase from Sir Robert Kelly sums up the entire club: much more than a football club, to a lot of people it is a way of life. On the pitch, Neil Lennon's farewell season was a domestic stroll, a third consecutive title secured with nearly thirty points to spare, Kris Commons in career best form and Fraser Forster breaking the Scottish record for consecutive minutes without conceding, more than 1250 of them, an eternity with the goal shut. This long sleeved version is the Glasgow winter variant, made for freezing Parkhead nights when breath hangs in the air and the hoops keep singing. An anniversary shirt that chose to whisper its history rather than shout it.

Here at Hoopster this piece matters for the sentence hidden in the collar: much more than a football club, a way of life. A hundred and twenty five years after the first game, the hoops were still saying the same thing.