April 29 – Got Your Number | On This Football Day

April 29 – Got Your Number

IN the playground or the park, jumpers for goalposts, everyone always wants to be the Number 9 when they have a bit of a kick about.

Fans in the early part of the last century and before would have had no such numerical preference because it was on this day in 1933 that the first match took place with all players wearing numbers on their backs.

The idea of allocating players numbers had been around since the mid 1920s when both Arsenal and Chelsea had toyed with the format on an informal basis but there were concerns that numbers would spoil the club’s strip.

By the 1930s the FA were getting on board with the idea as identifying players for both officials and spectators was becoming more important.

They chose the 1933 FA Cup final at Wembley to experiment with the plan and duly issued the Everton and Manchester City players a number each.

Although the notion of certain positions being assigned certain numbers was already around the FA went slightly left field here and gave each player on the field a different number. Everton were given numbers 1 to 11, with Man City wearing 12 to 22.

Two goals from Dixie Dean and another from Jimmy Stein gave Everton a 3-0 win over a Man City side featuring a young Matt Busby.

The experiment was deemed a success and formally adopted by the Football League Management Committee in 1939 and the system went international for the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland where each member of the squad was assigned a number, 1 to 22.

Since the inception of shirt numbers almost every team and squad have based their allocation on playing positions so a goalkeeper will always have number 1, a striker number 9 and so on. A notable exception to this convention is the Argentine national team of the 1978 and 1982 World Cups who distributed their numbers alphabetically resulting in Ossie Ardiles wearing number 1 at the 1982 competition.

A couple of numbers are of course sacred because of the players associated with them, Johan Cruyff with number 14 and Maradona with number 10. As far as we have been able to establish, only one player has ever worn number 0 on his shirt: Hicham Zerouali was a Moroccan footballer who played for Aberdeen from 1999 who was nicknamed ‘Zero’ by the Dons fans.

Tragically Zerouali was killed in a car crash in December 2004 aged just 27 and the club have since retired the number 0 in his honour.

Meanwhile Milan offered to retire Paolo Maldini’s number 3, but he has given consent for his sons to adopt the number 3 shirt if either of them play professionally for the club.

Well that was all a bit numberwang but tomorrow we will be back with the demise of England’s football equivalent of Winston Churchill.