The end of January and the beginning of February this year many sports fans remembered as the days when every day there were new and more and more sad news about striker Emiliano Sala. On January 19, the Argentine moved to Cardiff City, but returned to Nantes to say goodbye to his teammates, during the return flight there was a disaster. The wreckage of the plane was found at the bottom of the English Channel only two weeks later. It would seem that this sad story should have ended there, but it is not so. Between the teams are still ongoing proceedings, because of the fact that the English refuse to pay for the transfer of the player.
The clubs have not been able to come to an agreement on their own, so the case is being handled by FIFA. In addition, it recently became known about the death of the father of the footballer. The only thing that somehow brightens up this story – “Nantes” brought out the number under which the Argentine played in memory of the player. We decided to tell you how soccer players choose their game numbers, and why they are taken out of circulation.
More than numbers
As a rule, the number is taken out of circulation to recognize the merits of the player, or in the case of his death, to honor the memory of the athlete, as it happened with Sala. A similar situation, best known among Russian fans, is the death of Sergei Perkhun. Despite the fact that he played only 13 games for CSKA, after his death the number 16 was taken out of circulation. And the fans, for all the remaining games of the season, stretched a banner in the stands in the form of a T-shirt with the number and name of the goalkeeper.
An example of how the club honors the merits of the player – taking out of circulation the number under which Paolo Maldini played. The club management planned to mark the merits of the ex-footballer in this way, but he was against it. In the end, the parties agreed that the number will be given to one of Maldini’s sons when he plays for the main team. And his youngest son, Daniele, is gradually getting closer to that as he plays for the Milan U-19 team. There were even rumors in the winter that he would sign with the main team, and just recently the young player received a call-up to the Italy U-18 national team.
After Mathieu Valbuena signed a contract with Dynamo Moscow, the management of Olympique Marseille, where he spent eight years, decided to recognize his contribution. His number was taken out of circulation, but this number meant so much to the Frenchman that he wanted to secure it for himself and at his new club, but there was a problem. When the player joined the Muscovites it turned out that the number 28 was occupied by Boris Rotenberg – the son of the club president of those years. Stanislav Cherchesov, who held the post of head coach joked that the transfer number could be more expensive than the transfer of the player himself.
But this was not the end of Valbuena’s misfortunes, it turned out that the eight, under which he played in the national team, is occupied by Artur Yusupov. And number 82 – the mirror image of his favorite number is used by Guram Adzhoev – the son of the team’s sporting director. Eventually the Frenchman was allocated number 14, under which he later played for the Moscow club. “Marseille” highly valued the contribution of Valbuena, but it did not prevent him from moving to the camp of principal rivals – “Lyon”. That naturally caused a negative reaction from the fans.
Also, many teams display numbers to thank the fans for their support. Some use number 1 to show that there is no one more important than the fans, but the most common story is that clubs use the number 12. There is even a beautiful, but very fairy tale-like story that the team had no one to replace a large number of injured athletes, and then they resorted to the help of a fan who played under the number 12 and even scored the winning goal.
Où tout cela a-t-il commencé ?
The numbers first appeared on shirts in England in 1928, on the backs of Chelsea and Arsenal players. The teams first took to the pitch with numbers on their backs on the same day, but in different matches. The original idea of the number was to designate the role of the player on the field. One received the goalkeeper, defenders – numbers two, three, four, five, the ninth number as a rule received the center-forward, and the rest of the attacking players number ten and eleven. Other numbers were given to midfield players. Five years later, the country’s soccer association held a match as an experiment where one team took the field with numbers one through eleven and the other team with numbers twelve through twenty-two. Eventually the first option was adopted, later, when teams had the right to substitute, the substitutes began to be given numbers starting from 12, but teams were allowed not to use the number 13.
In the USSR, the numbers appeared after a series of friendly matches played by Dynamo Moscow in the UK in 1945. The numbers on the uniforms appeared already in the 1946 season, along with match protocols, which the USSR had not had before.
Players received permanent numbers only during the World Championship in Switzerland in 1954. Teams had the need to submit an application for the entire tournament, where the numbers of all players were indicated. But there was still a need to select numbers in order, starting with one. This continued until the nineties of the twentieth century. All players in the clubs had permanent numbers, and most importantly – each player could choose any number. At international tournaments, this practice began to be applied, starting with the 1994 World Cup in the United States.
Since then, the players have had complete freedom of choice, some players are eager to get the number under which their idol played, and in some cases performs. One of the fresh examples – Kylian Mbappe, the Frenchman played under the number 29, and since the current season he has on his back appeared “seven”, the footballer himself did not talk about it, but many suspect that the changes are associated with a special attitude Kylian to Ronaldo.
As it turned out, the Portuguese began to perform under the seventh number for a reason. He made the choice after the recommendation of the head coach of Manchester United – Alex Ferguson.
As Cristiano himself admitted, the words of the coach surprised him a lot, because before him this number was worn by David Beckham, Eric Cantona and Bryan Robson. Now the Portuguese seven has become a real brand, which he actively uses, the CR7 logo has become known around the world, there are collections of underwear, shirts, shoes, which are produced under the name of the athlete.
Some players choose the last digits of the year of their birth as their number. One example is Russian soccer player Fyodor Smolov, he was born in 1990 and used the corresponding number at Anzhi, Ural and Krasnodar. At his current club, Fyodor plays with the number nine on his back.