Colours
Ajax originally played in an all black uniform with a red sash tied around the players' waists, but that uniform was soon replaced by a red/white striped shirt and black shorts. Red, black and white are the three colours of the flag of Amsterdam. However, when, under manager Jack Kirwan, the club got promoted to the top flight of Dutch football for the first time in 1911 (then the Eerste Klasse or 'First Class', later named the Eredivisie), Ajax were forced to change their colours because Sparta Rotterdam already had exactly the same outfit. Special kits for away fixtures did not exist at the time and according to football association regulations the newcomers had to change their colours if two teams in the same league had identical uniforms. Ajax opted for white shorts and white shirt with a broad, vertical red stripe over chest and back, which still is Ajax's outfit.
Ajax's shirts have been sponsored by TDK, and by ABN AMRO from 1991 to 2008. AEGON has replaced ABN AMRO as the new head sponsor for a period of at least seven years. On 1 April 2007, Ajax wore a different sponsor for the match against Heracles Almelo: Florius. Florius is a banking program just launched by ABN AMRO who wanted it to be the shirt sponsor for one match. The shirts have been manufactured by Umbro (1989–2000) and Adidas since 2000 (until at least 2010).
Read more about this topic: AFC Ajax
Famous quotes containing the word colours:
“So different are the colours of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past; and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Your wits can’t thicken in that soft moist air, on those white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You’ve no such colours in the sky, no such lure in the distances, no such sadness in the evenings. Oh the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart-scalding, never satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming!”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“In a borealic iceberg came Victoria; she
Knew Prince Albert’s tall memorial took the colours of the floreal
And the borealic iceberg;”
—Dame Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)