Iconic kit: Sporting 1987/88 – Hummel’s brief but lasting impression | OneFootball

A new dawn began in the summer of 1987. For the very first time in the history of Sporting Clube de Portugal, the club would play an entire season with a sponsor on their green and white hooped shirt. The last of the Big Three to join the future had also been the first of the Big Three to sport a sponsorship, even if only for a few days, more than a decade prior.

The 1987/88 home shirt became absolutely iconic, but it wasn’t the only one. The new deal with the German manufacturer Hummel also brought to the Lions the chance to wear their most famous template ever, made popular in the 1986 World Cup by the Danish national side. Add a third memorable all-green kit that delighted the most hardcore of supporters, and you had the perfect combination, even if, on the pitch, things didn’t go so well for the Lisbon Lions.

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Hummel takes over and makes a splash

The famous 7-1 win against SL Benfica had been the last iconic afternoon where Sporting would play with their famous sponsor-less shirt. Come the 1987/88 season, everything was about to change. The club moved on from the French Le Coq Sportif kit maker, who had provided some of the most beautiful shirts the club had ever had, to Hummel. The Germans were starting to make a name for themselves in the international arena after their successful partnership with Denmark that began during Euro 1984 and had followed it up in the Mexico World Cup to devastating effect. Minnows in their homeland, with both Adidas and Puma sharing the spoils, Hummel searched for clubs worldwide to spread the brand and found in Aston Villa, Southampton and Sporting CP the perfect ambassadors.

The club’s new home shirt would sport the typical shoulder logo of the brand in white and green, while the tone of green used was slightly lighter than the traditional choice of Le Coq Sportif. Still, the traditional hoops remained with the club badge sewn up alongside a green hoop and the Hummel logo in black over the top white stripe. The numbers on the back were bold black, as were the shorts – with white ones used on special occasions – and hooped green and white socks.

Sporting were the first Portuguese team to have a shirt sponsor

The great novelty came when the league started. During pre-season the club still used a sponsor-less shirt, as they would in European ties, but for the league – which had exceptionally expanded to twenty sides – for the first time the club sported the sponsor of Fnac, not the famous French retailer company but an air conditioner brand who would sponsor SL Benfica home shirts as well, as they finished their deal with petrol oil company Shell. The black Fnac logo on a white cloth background became a new sight at the José de Alvalade, paving the way for a new era for the Lisbon giants. The Fnac sponsorship would last for another season before the club moved on to Nissan and then insurance company Bonança, at the turn of the decade, under a new manufacturer, Umbro. Of course, Sporting, unbeknownst to many, had been the first Portuguese club to wear a sponsor back in the day.

In June of 1975, the Lions were invited to take part in the Paris Tournament, a friendly event staged at the end of the season, where many world-class clubs were invited to perform for a crowd at the Parc des Princes. Coming out of the April revolution, in a city crowded with Portuguese immigrants, Sporting were the perfect fit for the event, alongside the likes of Valencia, Fluminense and, of course, Johan Cruyff’s Paris-Saint Germain. Yes, Johan Cruyff. The Dutchman, who was still a Barcelona player, had been invited by the Parisian side to feature for them for a couple of friendly matches, with a handsome cachet in hand. Excused by the Catalans,

Sporting played Johan Cruyff’s Paris-Saint Germain, both teams wearing sponsored shirts, in a one-off 1975 Paris tournament

Cruyff turned up and made an immediate impact. In the first match, the locals beat Sporting 3-1, with the Dutch master on the score sheet, while the only goal of the Portuguese side was scored by Nelson, assisted by the great Hector Yazalde, who played alongside Dinis and Marinho in the attacking line. Days later the Lions were again beaten by Fluminense, 3-0, and finished the event last, while Valencia, who won the tie against the French, came out winners.

The great novelty of the event was that it was sponsored by the French media conglomerate France-Soir, and all clubs invited were forced to play with the sponsors on their shirts, bar the locals, who already had an agreement with RTL, to get the full offered money cachet. For those two matches, the green-and-white Sporting shirts became the first in Portugal’s football history to sport a sponsor, almost a decade before Varzim, first, and then FC Porto, embraced the novelty. Sporting would wait twelve years until the club finally signed a long-term deal with any brand, despite being one of the most coveted shirts in their day.

Sporting’s second kit was a radical digression based on the traditional Stromp design

But if using a sponsorship was a novelty, what really stirred the waters was the alternative kit chosen for the season. As usual, Sporting had their Stromp white-green half shirt as their favoured alternative option, but Hummel decided to bring their most famous template to Lisbon instead. The green and white shirt, with very small white pinstripes, gave way to a radical interpretation of the Stromp version, something many veteran supporters took a dislike to it. Younger supporters, instead, mesmerised by those Danish Dynamite shirts, which would become a cult classic over the years, welcomed the novelty, but the kit was rarely used by the first squad during the season, with the club favouring a more popular third choice kit that was all-green, with the Hummel shoulder logo in white.

The choice for the all-green kit was derived from the mandatory club assessment that at least one of the alternative kits should be either all green or all white or the full Stromp version. With the all-green shirt, Hummel complied with the club’s statutes, and also made the supporters happy as the club was beginning to sell replicas in their official store, even if they were of a poorer quality compared to the match-worn versions. The all-green shirt was used on five occasions during the season and rarely with a sponsor on it, making it a more retro model that instantly turned into a crowd favourite.

Sporting’s 3rd kit for 1987/88 was all-green. Although rarely worn by the team it became a fans’ favourite

Sadly, on the pitch, the first Hummel season was far from memorable. Sporting started the season under Keith Burkinshaw, but he was sacked mid-season and replaced by António Morais, who had become a sort of celebrity as José Maria Pedroto’s assistant in Porto, and who many touted to be the next big thing in the ranks of Portuguese managers after so many years working with the “Master”. Morais wasn’t able to steer the ship, and Sporting finished the season a distant fourth to league champions FC Porto, nineteen points above in the table at a time when only two points per win were awarded. For the first time in the club’s history, six years had passed since the last league win, back in 1981/82, and few could imagine then that it would take another twelve years before they celebrated another domestic league.

Paulinho Cascavel, signed in the summer from Vitória to replace the former club legend Manuel Fernandes, was one of the few positive highlights of the season, alongside a young Jorge Cadete, who played his first professional season stationed on the wing. The only trophy of the season – with the side beaten by second-tier Farense in the Portuguese Cup and ousted by Atalanta in the Cup Winners’ Cup – was the Super Cup, won against Benfica in a two-legged tie, making it the first time in five seasons Sporting lifted silverware of any kind.

Boardroom woes: lies and laundering

The failed Frank Rijkaard transfer saga paved the way for a presidential ballot won by Jorge Gonçalves, an investor who promised the signing of several high-profile players to reignite the Lions’ spark but who ended up fleeing to Angola, accused of money laundering by the Portuguese authorities, leaving Sporting in tatters.

The following season, Hummel decided on a similar template, with the Fnac sponsorship directly emblazoned on the shirt to give it a more aesthetic appeal. While the second kit remained the same template, Sporting moved to an all-white third kit that was mostly used as the alternative option during the season. It included a black sponsor logo and the usual shoulder brand design in green, with white or green shorts. The season didn’t finish well with the board resigning after a second consecutive fourth place in the league and an early European dismissal at the hands of Real Sociedad. It was to be the second and penultimate season under Hummel, who would be replaced by Umbro at the end of the 1989/90 campaign, now with Sousa Cintra in charge.

Hummel paves the way into brave new world

By then, Sporting supporters had grown used to having a sponsor on the club’s kits, and even if some criticised the smoother green tone of the shirts, those models became fan favourites over the years. The club had embraced the future, and over the following decades, in the hands of the likes of Adidas, Reebok, Puma, Macron and Nike, they would evolve from the same patterns, with the biggest issue always coming from the difficulty of adding a sponsor logo in a hooped model. Some did it better than others, but for the history records, Hummel did it first, and it was glorious.