Umbro dive into their prestigious 94-year footballing history for Spring/Summer 2018 to discover a long-lost World Cup story that’s never been told. It starts back in 1966 when Harold Humphreys, Umbro’s founder, decided that Umbro would dominate that year’s World Cup in England.
Yeah, you just wanna look straight at the photography, decide if you like it, and move on with your life, don't you? Well stick with this one as it deserves a bit of backstory. Here goes... Humphreys' son John travelled the world to strike deals with the sixteen competing teams at the 1966 World Cup to wear Umbro.
However, when the tournament started, only fifteen nations did. The USSR did not wear the agreed Umbro kit and the design was lost to history. The recent discovery of this story became the inspiration for "Unforgotten", Umbro’s SS 18 collection. A timely drop considering the host of the upcoming World Cup.
Unforgotten hits the sweet spot where retro sportswear meets Russian streetwear. Taking inspiration from 1960s Soviet design attributes, the Unforgotten collection has a distinctive aesthetic. The collection is split into two core lines. The Umbro ‘Missing Team’ range uses colours of the Russian flag with Soviet typography influencing the specially designed Umbro logo.
The ‘Lev’ range, named after the legendary Soviet Goalkeeper Lev Yashin, has black as the predominant colourway, inspired by his nickname of the Black Spider, which came from the fact that he always wore black from head to toe.
Across the whole Unforgotten collection there’s a clever visual reference to the origin of the story with 16 dots representing each team that took part in the 1966 world cup finals. The Soviet Union, the only team not to wear the Umbro kit, has been called out in a different colour and placed in fourth spot to illustrate the team’s finishing position at the tournament.
The Umbro "Unforgotten" collection drops on April 25.
