| Introduction
Germany 1996
Willem II 2002
Real Madrid 2003
AC Milan 2004
Chelsea 2004
Roda JC 2004
FC Utrecht 2004
Ajax 2004
Cameroon 2004
Italy 2004
Sporting 2004
Bayern München 2005
Schalke 04
Real Madrid 2005
FC Twente 2005
NAC/Vitesse 2005
Italy 2006
Netherlands 2006
Sevilla 2006 | | At the end of 2005 Italy payed some games in the shirts designed for the World Championship 2006 in Germany. The numbers are a custom design, possibly inspired by LCD. This font, often used for alarm clocks, is based on two rectangles that are slanted. In contrast to the LCD font the numbers on the Italien shirts are drawn with an ininterrupted line, and the outer corners are rounded. Striking is a thin line on top and right side of each figure, a half contour.
Compared to the Baskerville like numbers they used before, this is a real deterioration. The numbers are another variant of constructed figures. Moreover they are slanted, which looks unbalanced. The 7 is ugly, and the thin half contour is a good example of affectation.
Even though these numbers are quite insipid, the shirt is interesting, because the of the letters used for player's names. In this case lower case letters are used, while we are used to capitals for player's names. In my opinion this looks very good. But in the mean time I want to state that on football shirts letters aren't really important. They are small and diifficult to read from great distance. What matters are numbers, not letters. PS. As the same numbers and names are used on the shirt of Paraguay, it appeared to be a custom typeface made by Dalton Maag for Puma. As said, the typeface for the names is nice, but the numbers are disappointing. | |  | |
