Over the next few days, something unusual will be happening across Spanish soccer. Nearly 40 men’s professional clubs in La Liga’s top two divisions will take to the field wearing retro-looking uniforms inspired by their respective histories. The kits were first unveiled at Madrid Fashion Week and are part of a campaign celebrating the country’s love for the sport. It is a fitting prelude.

Ten weeks later, the largest World Cup in history will be held across the US, Canada and Mexico — 48 teams, 104 matches, the most expansive commercial stage the sport has ever assembled. And many players will be wearing nostalgia-laden gear: Adidas recently unveiled new away kits embracing a “90s aesthetic” but designed in a “modern, contemporary way.” They will also bear the brand’s famous trefoil motif — for the first time in more than three decades.

The past is no longer just being collected, but worn, remade and reimagined.

The shirts that changed everything

To understand how soccer arrived here, you have to go further back than expected. “Proper fan replica shirts weren’t widely available until the 1970s,” said Alex Ireland, author of “Pretty Poly: The History of the Football Shirt.” “It was really only in the nineties where they became more broadly acceptable to go to the pub in.

Umbro’s England away shirt for Euro 96 arguably led the shift from uniform to everyday wear. The two-tone blue striped shirt was designed to pair with jeans — an early acknowledgement that the its life extended beyond the pitch. Technology did the rest. Advances in fabric printing allowed designers to embed complex graphics directly onto material, turning shirts into moving canvases. The result was the most visually inventive decade in the sport’s sartorial history.

“Everyone remembers their first World Cup,” said Sam Handy, General Manager of Football at Adidas. “Those kits get embedded in your memory structures — this is what football looks like.”

Mine was Italia 90 and the West Germany home shirt (pictured at the top) — black, red and gold geometric abstraction across the chest — what remains the holy grail among collectors. Norwegian collector Even Nesset describes something close to involuntary recall: “That shirt gives me a kind of false memory of 1990 — from seeing it, from watching YouTube clips of it being worn on the pitch.” England’s third shirt from the same year — sky blue with distinct geometric patterns, and inseparable from New Order’s hit song “World in Motion” — is listed on Cult Kits’ for $480.

While England didn’t wear the shirt on the pitch itself, its fan favorite status and the team’s semi-final run and subsequent penalty shootout defeat to West Germany, who would go on to win the World Cup, helped ensured its legacy, alongside the more classic white home shirt.

“When a brand takes risks in design and embeds it with a decent run for the team, you have a chance of creating something very visually sticky,” said Handy. Nesset distills it further, classifying “the crazy shirts, bold enough to seem wrong at first (USA 1994, Jamaica 1998, Mexico 1998), and the beautiful shirts, quietly perfect (Colombia 1990, Italy 1994).”

Those shirts spent decades in the margins — traded through flea markets and early eBay. Then, over the past two decades, something structural happened. Dedicated platforms — Classic Football Shirts, Cult Kits, Vintage Football Shirts, Saturdays Football and others — transformed an informal network into a scaled, trusted, global market. Founded by fans who couldn’t find the shirts they wanted, they built what they needed, evolving passion projects into lucrative businesses.

David Jones, co-founder of Cult Kits, describes a buyer base that has transformed. “Seventy percent buy for nostalgia — the players you pretended to be growing up. The rest have discovered soccer kits in a fashion sense.”

But this movement runs deeper than celebrity adoption. Psychologist Clay Routledge calls it “historical nostalgia” — a documented longing for eras you never inhabited. His research found 68% of Gen Z adults experience it, and far from being regressive, he argues it is future-oriented: a way of resolving present dissatisfaction by reaching toward something that feels more real. Football shirts are not alone in this. “It’s the same reason we see 100 different Marvel films,” Ireland explained, “you’ve got instant buy-in, a connection that means you don’t need to figure out if you like it. From rebooted franchises, fashion houses mining their archives and generation alpha raised on blended noughties pop, the same force is reshaping culture more broadly.

Cultural critic Simon Reynolds describes the broader condition as “Retromania” — we live in a state of atemporality where 1994 and 2026 exist on the same screen simultaneously. The World Cup crystallizes this. Each tournament is a sealed, re-watchable world — a month of soccer frozen in time. A generation that wasn’t alive for France 98 can spend a weekend inside it on YouTube, emerging with genuine emotional attachments to objects they never encountered in real time.

The summer everything arrives at once

“This is a defining era of soccer culture,” said Handy, “and the jersey is perhaps its clearest expression.” The trefoil — last seen on a World Cup shirt in 1990 — has recently appeared on special edition shirts and now, 25 World Cup competition kits.“We’re just trying to do it all — the past and the future — and letting it all exist at the same time,” Handy added.

Mat Davis, founder of Saturdays Football, has watched the arc from the inside. As the vintage market for men’s soccer jerseys commoditized beneath him — “you search by price, not ‘wow, that’s a unique shirt’” — he pivoted toward original product and, most recently, a partnership with Adidas, embroidering mini versions of the newly released away shirts onto Saturdays Football’s signature caps. Amplification for him, authenticity for Adidas.

Nowhere is that more resonant than with the then-divisive, now cult-classic Adidas-designed US men’s national team’s (USMNT) 94 away shirt. That shirt — a washed-denim effect with diagonally placed white stars — was reportedly met with silence when Adidas first unveiled it to the squad, followed by nervous laughter. Retailers were equally unsure, yet all 50,000 replica kits produced were sold. The bold design would eventually stand the test of time, partly because the team surprised many by reaching the round of 16, wearing the jersey during some of their biggest tournament moments. More than three decades later, the brand has recentlyreleased a lifestyle collection of jerseys, jackets, shorts, hats and even a pair of Samba trainers basedon the memorable design. Nike, who have dressed the team since 1995, designed its 2026 kits in close collaboration with players. They will be worn by all 27 US Soccer teams — men’s, women’s and youth — unifying players under one cohesive, visual identity for the first time. In some ways, the curvy red and white stripes have a similarly bold, visual language to those scattered stars of the Adidas 1994 shirt.

Rather than legacy, Handy says design becomes aninfinite loop: iconic styles becoming part of the visual canon, to be drawn from in perpetuity.

This summer, that loop closes on home soil. Major League Soccer, founded in 1993 as part of the US’ bid to host its first World Cup the following year, has helped the sport reportedly overtake baseball as America’s third favorite sport, according to a survey by The Economist. The World Cup returns not to a country where professional soccer is a novelty, but to one that has quietly, irreversibly, made the game its own.

USMNT midfielder Tyler Adams put the stakes plainly: “I want to have that kit you look back at in 30 years and you’re like, that’s still the best one.” This summer, someone in the crowd will be wearing a vintage jersey from 1994 or a reissue, while others will be wearing updated ones designed to be coveted decades later.

Inside the collar of Belgium’s Adidas away shirt, a hidden line of text aptly reads: “Ceci n’est pas un maillot.” This is not a jersey. Well, not just a jersey anymore.

CNN

FIFA has increased payments to teams competing in the 2026 World Cup, raising the total distribution to $871 million, making it the most lucrative edition on record.

But the increased financial distributions, announced last Wednesday at the 36th FIFA Council meeting in Vancouver, Canada, come as the governing body faces criticism over ticket pricing and its commercial partnerships.

Under the new financial distribution structure, participating associations at the 2026 World Cup — set to be held across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada from 11 June — will each receive an additional $2 million, across:

• Preparation money: $2.5 million, up from $1.5 million at the 2022 World Cup, and
• Qualification money: $10 million, up from $9 million in 2022

That brings the minimum payout for each team to at least $12.5 million upon qualification, with additional prize money tied to performance in the tournament.

These payments are meant to defray some of the costs associated with qualifying and preparing for the quadrennial sporting tournament, including travel, training facilities and staff remuneration and are expected to be particularly meaningful to teams outside of the sport’s traditional powerhouses, according to Ricardo Fort, founder of sport consultancy Fort Consulting.

“This incremental contribution to the national football associations reinforces FIFA’s role in redistributing the commercial success of the tournament back into the global football ecosystem,” Fort said.

The 2026 edition of the World Cup is set to be the largest-ever, expanding to 48 teams, up from 32 in 2022. Four national teams — Cape Verde, Curacao, Jordan, and Uzbekistan — are set to make their debuts at this year’s edition.

FIFA said more than $16 million has also been set aside to cover the costs of participating delegations and team ticketing allocations, bringing the total pool set aside for participating teams to $871 million.

Football’s governing body previously announced a more than 50% increase in the tournament’s prize pool in December.

In December, the FIFA Council approved a “record-breaking” prize pool of $727 million at the 2026 edition of the tournament, a 65% increase from the $440 million allocated to teams in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Ticket pricing concerns

Despite the higher payouts at this year’s tournament, fans have expressed gripes over ticket pricing and the sources of FIFA’s revenue.

Under FIFA’s new “dynamic” pricing system, ticket prices fluctuate on demand. Some fans have reported that ticket prices have risen by more than tenfold from the 2022 tournament.

A CNBC review of ticket prices revealed prices ranging from $380 for a Category 2 ticket for a group stage match between Curaçao and Côte d’Ivoire in Philadelphia, to $4,105 for Category 1 tickets to a game between the U.S. and Paraguay at the Los Angeles Stadium.

On FIFA’s official ticket resale platform, some listings have reached extreme levels, with one such resale ticket for the final listed at $11.5 million. While FIFA does not control the prices of resale tickets, a 15% fee on the value of each transaction is collected.

A FIFA spokesperson told CNBC that the organization was “focused on ensuring fair access to our game for existing but also prospective fans, and offered group stage tickets starting at $60.”

These lower-cost tickets, however, were allocated “specifically to supporters of qualified teams, with the selection and distribution process managed individually by the Participating Member Associations.”

The spokesperson added that the variable pricing system “aligns with industry trends across various sports and entertainment sectors,” and ensures a “fair market value for events.”

Despite outrage over ticket prices, demand for tickets at this year’s World Cup ostensibly remains high.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino previously told CNBC that the organization has received around 508 million requests for the seven million tickets on offer across the tournament’s 104 matches.

If true, in-person viewership at this year’s World Cup would dwarf attendance at the 2022 tournament in Qatar, which drew more than 3.4 million spectators across all 64 matches.

“Ticket pricing is always a sensitive topic for mega-events of this scale,” Fort said. “There will always be segments of fans who feel priced out, especially for premium matches.”

Still, he said FIFA’s pricing strategy “has worked in the American market,” given the high demand.

Fans appear to have paid little attention to FIFA’s other controversies, including a sponsorship deal with Saudi Arabia’s Aramco — which drew calls from players to end the oil deal citing humanitarian and environmental concerns — and the awarding of the FIFA Peace Prize to U.S. President Donald Trump.

“Historically, what we’ve seen is that fan engagement with the tournament itself remains incredibly resilient. Once the competition starts, the focus shifts very quickly to the football,” said Fort.

FIFA’s finances have also grown alongside the tournament. In 2025, the governing body’s revenues totaled $2.66 billion, with television broadcasting rights accounting for a large portion, followed by marketing rights.

Its total assets rose to $9.48 billion, up 54% from the year before. Total reserves, however, fell to nearly $2.7 billion, down by 8% year over year as total liabilities more than doubled in 2025.

Officially a not-for-profit, FIFA’s investments are funneled to infrastructure across its 211 member nations, as well as the organization of tournaments such as the World Cup and Club World Cup, according to the Association’s 2027-2030 budget.

CNBC

Arsenal supporters had almost forgotten what it was like to win without their nerves being shredded. They were reacquainted with the feeling on an occasion when everything felt right from the start and got better and better. It was all over by half-time, Arsenal three goals to the good and the Emirates Stadium purring over a virtuoso Bukayo Saka performance.

The England winger had not been himself before he was forced to take time out at the end of March to rest an achilles problem – and one or two others aches. He was back in the starting XI here and the bang he produced could be heard in Manchester. City do not play until Monday night. They will kick off at Everton six points behind Arsenal at the top, albeit having played two games fewer. Arsenal have turned up the heat inexorably.

It looked as though Saka was immune to the pressure on his club, which has been such a feature of the season and the last few months, especially. When did Arsenal last win in the league with a degree of comfort? It was the 4-1 at Tottenham on 21 February.

Saka made the opening goal for Viktor Gyökeres in the ninth minute, he scored the second himself and he was involved at the beginning of the move for No 3, which was headed home by Gyökeres for his 21st goal of the season in all competitions. Saka set the tone, he calmed and inspired everyone in red, teammates and fans alike. He did not reappear for the second half; it was safe to say his work was done. It was the most devastating of cameos.

Arsenal have looked jaded of late; anxious. Short of creativity and goals. This was a game to restore the collective belief and the plus-three in the goal difference column was very welcome, too. The 22-year wait for the title has pushed the boundaries of obsession. Arsenal can feel it edging closer.

The noise at the outset had been really something; the nervous energy of the Arsenal crowd morphing into tremendous encouragement and their team made the dream start. The breakthrough was all about Saka. When Arsenal isolated him against Raúl Jiménez after working a free-kick short and coming over to the right, the alarm bells rang for Fulham.

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Viktor Gyökeres rises highest to score Arsenal’s third. Photograph: Mark Leech/Offside/Getty Images

Saka went back and then he made his move, jinking up the outside, tying Jiménez in a knot. It was as if the Fulham striker had been freeze-framed; completely taken out of the game. Saka’s low cross was a beauty and Gyökeres, having timed his run, had a tap-in.

Arsenal had gone 1-0 up through Eberechi Eze in exactly the same minute of last Saturday’s game here against Newcastle. It was the prompt for them to sink back, the anxiety to grip. There was a different feel about this occasion. Arsenal were so much more proactive, their tempo was high. They wanted a second goal before the interval and they chased it with conviction. They would get it and then some.

It helped having Saka in this kind of mood. He bristled with assurance on the ball, he was terrifying for everyone in Fulham white. There was a certainty about him when he picked up possession and trained his sights forward. Eze was dangerous in the pockets, Leandro Trossard was very good off the left and it was just an excellent day for Gyökeres.

Arsenal were not disheartened when Gabriel Magalhães was denied at close quarters by Bernd Leno after a Saka corner. Or when the Fulham goalkeeper saved smartly from Gyökeres, Saka dragging the rebound wide. Or when Riccardo Calafiori, who was back after injury, had a goal ruled out for offside in the 27th minute following a Trossard cross. They simply dug deeper, pushed harder. They could feel it was going to be their day. They made it that way.

Saka’s goal for 2-0 was a whipped finish inside Leno’s near post after Gyökeres held up an Eze pass up the inside right and laid it off. Did Leno anticipate a trademark Saka curler for the other corner? Maybe. But this is the thing with Saka. He can hurt you either way.

Arsenal turned the screw and it was 3-0 when Trossard motored up the inside left and hung up a cross for Gyökeres, who looped a fine header home. The move had been sparked when Gabriel stepped up to release Trossard. Before that, it had been Saka retaining the ball with supreme confidence and playing it inside.

Arteta made five changes to the team he sent out at Atlético Madrid on Wednesday in the Champions League semi-final first leg; a high number by his standards. His Atlético counterpart, Diego Simeone, made 11 for his team’s trip to Valencia earlier on Saturday – before Tuesday night’s second leg here. Atlético have little to play for in La Liga. They are fourth and will probably finish there.

Viktor Gyökeres pokes home to open the scoring. Photograph: Marc Atkins/Getty Images

Arteta’s most eye-catching decision was to play Myles Lewis-Skelly in midfield in place of Martín Zubimendi; the 19-year-old has never started an Arsenal game in midfield. He brought plenty of energy and that was the collective theme, really. Arsenal ran all over Fulham, who barely turned up. Marco Silva’s squad have been affected by a virus but they had to be better than this. Fulham have never won away against Arsenal; the run now stands at 33 matches.

Arteta was sufficiently relaxed to withdraw not only Saka but Declan Rice and Gyökeres in the 64th minute and the only question in a more pedestrian second half concerned whether Arsenal could score again. Gyökeres was denied by Leno in a one-on-one while Calafiori watched a header hit the Fulham goalkeeper on the head and come off the crossbar. Leno knew nothing about that. Arsenal know this was a serious statement.

 The Guardian