Boca Juniors shirt history

The first game that I will be at on Sunday sees Boca Juniors take on Paris Saint Germain. I have always wanted to go and see Boca Juniors and I can't see me getting over to Argentina any time in the near future, so I am going to have to make do with seeing them in North London. On my travels I have met plenty of Boca fans, but funnily enough they have all been Russian or Ukrainian. I am a bit disappointed that Martin Palermo has now retired, but I am still looking forward to it.

Obviously to do justice to the club history of Boca Juniors I'd probably have to write a book, so here's a quick history of their kit and colours instead.

When Boca were formed in 1905 they originally played in pink, but obviously came round to thinking that this was a bad idea and changed to a light blue colour later in the year. They didn't stick with this shirt for very long either and for the 3rd time in a year decided to change the shirt colour, this time to black and white stripes.

The following year they played another club who also wore black and white stripes and it was decided that the loser would have to change the colour of their shirts. Boca lost and decided that they would play in the colours of the flag of the next boat that came into port. The boat in question was the Swedish liner 'Drotting Sophia' and Boca have worn blue and yellow ever since.

From 1907 - 1913 Boca wore blue with a yellow sash, which was later revived for the centenary year in 2005. Shown below in the rather weird computer graphic.




From 1913 Boca wore the yellow panel on blue for the first time which has more or less been the shirt of choice since as worn by a rather young Diego Maradona below. Obviously in the early 80s rather than in the original 1913 shirt of course.



Since 1913 there have been very few variants from this strip. In 1996-7 Boca introduced a white stripe above and below the yellow panel:



and in 1998-99 they wore a shirt that featured more yellow than usual.



Boca have been pretty conservative in their experiments with shirt design, but they have experimented a little in the Copa Mercosur with the wearing a blue shirt with pinstripes in 1998 and a grey number for the 2000-2001 tournament.




The only other variant has been the special edition released for the 105th anniversary in 2010 which resembled the Swedish flag where the famous blue and yellow shirt originally came from.

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