More Than Just the Premier League – Football Tops For Grass Roots

Football, one is frequently being reminded, is all about the old school. The grass roots, jumpers for goal posts, kids playing in the park after school, etc. It’s a salient point, particularly in the face of the national team’s latest calamitous showing. Forget the highly paid, one hears: let’s celebrate the passion of the “lower” divisions. Not something that was easy to do, even recently – but now, with the Internet fully fledged and sourcing kit from all over, a person can even buy football tops for Football League clubs online. 

There’s definitely been a bit of a tectonic shift, over the last couple of years, insofar as football support is concerned. Fans of the game are getting increasingly annoyed by the cavalier attitude the “top” clubs seem to have towards their own supporters: not to mention the questionable loyalty of their players, who have repeatedly hit back page headlines with contract breaking moves to whoever (and wherever) is willing to pay the most cash. When one’s star players are looking for tax breaks rather than team glory, one knows something has gone wrong. This is why this new availability of grass roots football tops to the masses has come as something of a relief – a respite, if you like, from the rampant consumerism of the “top flight” game.

While Premier League clubs are leaking big name players like a sieve, or going into receivership because their “business” is faltering, the teams that occupy the league below the Premiership are going from strength to strength. Support, always huge, is growing to never before seen proportions as some of the more passionate affiliates of the top flight clubs either abandon “their” teams, or select a “second” side as recipients of their love. The first tokens of that love, same as ever, are the football tops, which are bought in their hundreds of thousands by spectators longing to re-acquaint themselves with the real glory of football, rather than all this fairly sordid money making that seems to have gutted the top level game.

Prior to the Internet, things like Football League shirts were notoriously hard to source. Generally, one had to go in person to the ground of the club in question and patronise the team shop – which, inevitably, was only open during match-day hours. Now, though, the Internet allows even the most diluted supporter to get hold of grass roots football tops from his or her home – which has resulted in a great wave of quality official replica shirts flooding the online market. Those clubs that are now providing the real excitement in the British game are fully represented in online stores like UK based Football Tops, whose selection of kits covers all the major Football League heroes as well as their Premiership counterparts. The money goes to the clubs who need it – and who have deserved it, by playing and representing the game in a fashion that has started to make people sit up and take notice. The fans are happy; the passionate clubs are happy.

Football might not be coming home – not how the song wanted it to, anyway – but football tops have found a new lease of life at least. Who knows: these may be the signs of a grass roots rising that will redirect English football to a better place.