The politics of shirt numbers – superstition, brand value and managers sending a message

“Not a chance.”

That was the response from a Premier League manager this summer when a multi-million-pound winger wanted to change his shirt to a number that carried more status. In the eyes of the manager, the player hadn’t done nearly enough since signing to justify running around with a new number on his back this season — and all the more so if it meant taking a shirt from someone else.

Another winger in the market for a shirt upgrade was on much safer ground. Lamine Yamal, who enjoyed an extraordinary breakthrough year with Barcelona and Spain, will wear No 19 next season — Lionel Messi’s old shirt — instead of 27.

It is a change that was forced in part because of La Liga rules that require clubs to submit 25-player first-team squads featuring numbers from 1 to 25 only. How would Phil Foden, Declan Rice and Trent Alexander-Arnold — 47, 41 and 66 respectively — cope in Spain?

As for Gianluigi Donnarumma, he has dispensed with the No 99 shirt that he chose because it marks the year of his birth. The Italian will wear No 1 in goal for Paris Saint-Germain this season which, at the risk of sounding like a Top of the Pops presenter in 1987, makes him the year’s biggest climber.

Shirt numbers are everything and nothing. Some players couldn’t care less what they wear and neither could the supporters who follow their teams. Others — players and fans alike — see a number as a much deeper part of a footballer’s identity and, in some cases, a reflection of their worth too. In fact, there are footballers who would rather not play than put on the ‘wrong’ shirt.

The classic tale — and it’s one that John Moncur recalls to The Athletic with a smile — involves Paulo Futre walking out of the visitors’ dressing room at Arsenal on the opening day of the 1996-97 season after discovering that West Ham hadn’t given him the number he was promised.

“No, not f*** 16! Number 10!” Futre shouted, before reeling off the names of Eusebio, Pele and Maradona.

Moncur was the player in possession of the No 10 shirt, prompting Harry Redknapp, who was West Ham’s manager at the time, to say to Futre that it was 16 or nothing. Futre chose nothing.

“He threw a paddy,” Moncur says. “He was there one minute and gone the next.

“The following week we had a meeting and Harry said he had a problem.

“I really wasn’t that fussed about numbers. And I liked Futre, actually — he was a good lad. So we did a little deal where I could go and use his villa in Penina (in the Algarve) and play a bit of golf there if I wanted to, and he got the No 10 shirt. The rest is history. I wore 16 afterwards and kept that for the rest of my time there.”

In the vast majority of cases, players and/or their representatives are reluctant to kick up a fuss over a squad number during transfer talks. That’s not to say it doesn’t get brought up in conversation; it often will. But it should never be a deal-breaker.

“There’s a lot more important things to fight for than taking a shirt off a team-mate,” says a leading agent, who was speaking on condition of anonymity. “Also, you risk looking like an idiot (as a player), you immediately put yourself under pressure, and you’re saying straight away that you think you’re better than someone.”

Occasionally, it will be the club, rather than the player, that initiates a conversation around a shirt number, using it as a kind of sweetener to make the idea of a move more attractive.

Jadon Sancho was offered the iconic No 7 shirt at United during negotiations in 2020, 12 months before he signed, and that jersey was mentioned again when he joined. By that point, though, Edinson Cavani was wearing No 7 and the Uruguayan was said to be unimpressed that United approached him about giving the jersey up.

Some senior staff at United totally understood Cavani’s stance — it felt like a matter of principle as much as anything, especially given his standing in the game and the fact Sancho was 13 years younger than him.

That, however, was not the end of the story for Cavani. Later that summer the balance of power shifted when Cristiano Ronaldo — CR7 et al — returned to Old Trafford. Ronaldo took the No 7 shirt and Cavani moved to No 21.

For an insight into what the dressing room fallout from shirt number changes can look like, the scene towards the end of episode three in the DAZN One Team, One Dream: This is Chelsea documentary makes for interesting viewing.

To provide a bit of background, the year is 2019 and Emma Hayes’ Chelsea team have just signed Sam Kerr, the prolific Australia international, to bolster their attacking options. Paul Green, Chelsea’s general manager, is shown chairing a staff meeting and briefing everyone on the Kerr deal.

“There is one other point to raise as well,” Green says. “Because Sam is such a big brand, the No 20 is part of her brand, and therefore she will take the No 20 shirt, which currently Jonna (Andersson) has. But she (Andersson) will move directly to No 25.”

Moments later, the Chelsea forward Fran Kirby is filmed talking to Andersson in the dressing room.

“Did they ask you (to change number) or did they tell you?” Kirby says.

“They told me when they signed her,” Andersson replies.

“That’s not OK,” Kirby adds.

The camera cuts to Kerr in the stand at Stamford Bridge. “It’s kind of like my thing, you know. I’m known around the world for wearing No 20,” Kerr says. “It would just be weird if I was in another number. It would be like seeing Ronaldo in a No 4.”

Back at the training ground, Kirby smiles. “Superstars get what they want!” she says.

That’s largely true but not always. Luis Figo, David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo knew that they were never going to get the No 7 shirt from Raul Gonzalez at Real Madrid — the Spaniard wore it for over a decade.

There are, of course, instances where players relinquish their number without any ill-feeling or resentment. Roberto Firmino was happy for Mohamed Salah to become No 11 at Liverpool, albeit the Brazilian later explained in his book Si Senor: My Liverpool Years that the primary reason for him giving up that shirt was his desire to wear No 9 rather than the narrative at the time, which was that it was another example of how selfless he was on and off the pitch.

As for Les Ferdinand, he handed over the No 9 shirt at Newcastle to Alan Shearer (was it possible to do anything else?) when the England forward returned ‘home’ in 1997.

“I adored that number,” Shearer explained in an interview with Callum Wilson in The Athletic in 2021. “It’s almost exactly 25 years since I signed for Newcastle and 9 is still what I am and who I am. It made me.”

Wilson told Shearer he was inspired by the thought of wearing the No 9 shirt too but — and this picks up on the point that the agent made earlier — knew he had to play the long game before approaching Joelinton.

“I walked in the door and didn’t want to ruffle any feathers straight away, so you have to bide your time, get your feet under the table and make friends around the dressing room rather than enemies,” Wilson explained. “I thought the mature thing to do was to settle for 13 in my first season and then me and Joe had the conversation when the No 7 (which Joelinton switched to) became available. He (Joelinton) was a gentleman about it.”

In an ideal world, a coveted number becomes free through a player leaving — the departure of club legend Iker Muniain at Athletic Bilbao means that Nico Williams will wear No 10 rather than No 11 this season, while Rasmus Hojlund has switched to No 9 at Manchester United in the wake of Anthony Martial moving on — and then it’s a simple question of whether the manager approves the change.

Some managers are far more involved than others in that process and want to sign off the full list of numbers, primarily to guard against a player taking a shirt that is out of step with where they see them in the pecking order — that could be an academy graduate getting ideas above their station (one former West Ham manager had an arbitrary number that he didn’t want any young player to go below until they were established), the wrong goalkeeper being given No 1 (not that every keeper wants to wear No 1), or a wannabe No 9 that isn’t quite ready.

In the case of Steve Sidwell, the No 9 was the last number the midfielder wanted when he joined Chelsea from Reading in 2007. Jose Mourinho rather unhelpfully made that call on Sidwell’s behalf and, as ever with the Chelsea manager, there was almost certainly another agenda.

“Looking back on why he may have made that decision now, he was sending a statement upstairs, to the board,” Sidwell told The Athletic in 2020. “That summer he had wanted more money to spend on transfers — but he’s brought in me, Tal Ben Haim and Claudio Pizarro on free transfers. The only big buy was Florent Malouda. Why didn’t he give Pizarro — a striker — the No 9? I reckon he was making a point by giving it to a free transfer from Reading.”

Ironically, Mourinho had been baffled when Khalid Boulahrouz, who was a defender, took the No 9 shirt before Sidwell. According to Boulahrouz, when the Chelsea kitman reeled off the numbers available, he started at 9 and leapt to 45 and 47. “So my thought was, ‘I’m not gonna play with a number like that’, so I said, ‘OK, give me No 9’,” he told Fox Sports.

A few days later, Mourinho pulled Boulahrouz aside and asked him why he chose the No 9. “I told him I didn’t want to play with a high number like 47 or 49. ‘You can understand that, right?’. But he responded: ‘But No 2 is also available’, and I was thinking: ‘Oh God, what am I doing?’. I guess that kitman set me up.”

Players wearing a shirt number that doesn’t correspond with their position has been going on for years and has the potential to send the traditionalists among us over the edge. What was Arsene Wenger thinking of letting William Gallas, a defender, take No 10? Did Milan Baros, a striker, really need to wear No 5 at Liverpool? And when has a forward — Wilfried Bony, Andy Carroll and Arouna Kone come to mind immediately — ever looked good with No 2 on their back?

Actually, Clint Dempsey might take issue with that question. “The man makes the number, the number doesn’t make the man,” Dempsey told Spurs TV during his time at Tottenham Hotspur, explaining his long connection with the No 2 jersey, which goes back to when he started playing for his college team.

Oleksandr Zinchenko has cited a similar reason to Dempsey for switching to 17 for Arsenal this season, plus the fact he wears the same number for Ukraine. Intriguingly for Arsenal fans, the No 10 shirt is currently, to borrow a line from the late great TV commentator Brian Moore, “up for grabs” now that Emile Smith Rowe has moved on to Fulham.

In contrast to La Liga and the Premier League, where Renato Sanches’ request to wear No 85 at Swansea was turned down by the Premier League in 2017 because it was not close enough to the existing highest number at the club, Italy has long adopted a more laid-back approach to shirt numbers.

It was all going so well…

The #PL reject the number 85 for @renatosanches35. He will now wear 3⃣5⃣ for the #Swans this season. pic.twitter.com/Lx7qWmkHOF

— Swansea City AFC (@SwansOfficial) August 31, 2017

Notable examples include the Chievo goalkeeper Cristiano Lupatelli wearing No 10 (a bet with his friends, apparently), Ivan Zamorano having 1+8 on his back at Inter Milan (Ronaldo took his No 9 jersey) and Siena’s ‘No 1′ Marco Fortin choosing No 14 (the clues are there).

If only the Ebbsfleet United manager Daryl McMahon had seen the funny side when Yado Mambo asked if he could wear the No 5 jersey when he was playing for the non-League club — a story that gathered legs when a tweet went viral back in 2017.

It’s easy to be dismissive about all of this and say that it’s nothing but a number, but football is an industry where superstition runs wild and that means that players find answers to their problems in all sorts of strange places, including on the back of their shirt.

When Antonio Valencia was struggling with injuries at Manchester United, he told The Athletic that he wondered whether “this shirt has something to do with this situation” and changed from No 7 to No 25 to “get back on track”.

Angel Di Maria didn’t particularly want that No 7 shirt at United either and in more recent times, it has started to feel like a poisoned chalice, to the point that people were surprised when Mason Mount accepted the jersey, and all the extra scrutiny that comes with it, when he moved from Chelsea.

Mount has experienced a difficult time at Old Trafford but at least his name has never been spelt incorrectly on the back of his shirt, unlike a couple of the Plymouth Argyle players on the weekend.

“You wouldn’t think (Adam) Forshaw is the most difficult name to spell,” Rob Hawthorne, the Sky Sports commentator, said as Plymouth Argyle chased shadows at Hillsborough and one of the club’s employees braced themselves for a ticking off on Monday morning.

(Top photo: Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC Via Getty Images)