Null Neon: When Nike Met Borussia Dortmund

Null Neon: When Nike Met Borussia Dortmund⁣

Compared to rivals Adidas, Nike are relative newcomers to the football kit industry. Beginning with a local Portland club in 1979, their first European kit was Sunderland in 1983. It wasn’t until signing with larger European clubs such as Paris Saint-Germain and Borussia Dortmund (Ballspielverein Borussia 09 e. V. Dortmund, more commonly known by the snappier BVB) at the end of the decade that the company’s footballing profile began to increase. At first, the partnership between the brash American sportswear giant and Dortmund, a working-class city built on coal mining and steel production does not seem an obvious match. However, by the time BVB became European champions in 1997 this partnership had produced an iconic set of kits which remain some of the most sought-after strips nearly three decades on. In addition, the evolution of this kit series mirrors the short but golden era of shirt design in the 1990s, when fashion design met football in an explosion of sight-threateningly bright and richly patterned polyester.⁣







The central figure in this story is Drake Ramberg, an American Nike designer from Portland who in 1990 was entrusted to set up his hometown company’s European design studio to support their growing European football stable. As a footballing ‘outsider’, Ramberg and his team were free from the traditions which had generally led to conservative football shirt designs. This was exemplified by the final pre-Nike BVB shirt in 1989-90; a custard yellow Adidas shirt with only a jacquard vertical stripe accenting the design. The team immersed themselves in local football culture, with the aim of developing designs that fans would be happy to wear on ‘the terrace, in the pub, or even at church’. They were aided by the invention of new printing technologies, which made the inclusion of complex jacquard patterns and sublimated color schemes possible cheaply and at scale. This early period of Nike BVB strips are perhaps best identified by the striking Volt Yellow color used from 1990-98, recently referred to as ‘null neon’ as a play on BVB’s nickname derived from their founding date in 1909.⁣

The 1990/91 shirt was the first Nike BVB shirt, the bold design set a high bar for future iterations to emulate. Large black triangular panels covered the shoulder region, with white sleeve panels, collar, and cuffs accenting the fluorescent yellow body of the shirt. More modest was the wavy jacquard pattern engineered within the fabric, a subtle precursor to the adventurous club-specific designs to follow. Local insurance firm Die Continentale continued their sponsorship, their typeface and simple ‘C’ logo later to become a key feature of the designs. For the first time Nike’s Future logo adorned the shirt, being ink printed along with the sponsor and club badge. Numbered shirts would continue to feature a blocky font used throughout the late eighties, featuring a 3D effect. A disappointing 10th place Bundesliga finish was offset by the appointment of Swiss coach Ottmar Hitzfeld who would oversee a period of unprecedented success for BVB.⁣

The 1991/92 shirt was the first design to be led by Ramberg, featuring several key features common to his team’s designs. An abstract sleeve design was created from cut-up line drawings of a football, with pixel blurring. Whilst appearing to reflect the increasing use of computing techniques in graphic design, the pattern was completed using half-tone printing techniques created in the 1880s. The traditional winged collar was replaced by a neck-hugging raised collar. The printed details were similar to the previous season’s effort, but the engineered pattern was much more complex featuring textured panels of interlocking irregular hexagonal shapes. Hitzfeld’s impact was immediate, as BVB missed out on the Bundesliga title by goal difference. Already, BVB’s most successful team was taking shape at both ends of the pitch as youth product Stefan Klos established himself as first-choice keeper whilst Swiss striker Stéphane Chapuisat scored 20 league goals following his move from Hitzfeld’s former club Grasshoppers.⁣







The 1992/93 design built upon the previous season’s effort as the line football design colors were inverted, and the same halftone techniques were applied to generate motion blur and resultant pixel dot patterns sublimated into the fabric. These bold designs continued along the length of the sleeves, and also featured in wide side panels in the body of the shirt. A thick, dark collar with yellow accents replaced last season’s sleeker design, and like the matching cuffs would prove prone to fading with age. UEFA sponsor regulations meant that the full Die Continentale logo could not be displayed for European games. Instead, en route to that season’s UEFA Cup Final the team’s shirts would for the first time feature the simple ‘C’ logo later to become synonymous with their European exploits. This season was the making of BVB, as they progressed to the UEFA Cup Final pocketing 25m deutschmarks (~£10m) en route, which allowed them to repatriate German stars including Stefan Reuter, Jurgen Köhler, Andreas Möller, Karlheinze Reidle and the inspirational Matthias Sammer. The 1993/94 shirt was largely similar to 1992/93, featuring the same jacquard pattern, collar, and key features such as sponsor, crest, and logo. The previous season’s sublimated pattern was replaced by one derived from the Nike Premier logo, featuring across the shoulders, lateral sleeves, and upper central chest. Distinctively, shirt numbers were set at an angle in line with the design.⁣

For 1994/95 (Ramberg’s personal favorite design), Nike’s team looked for local inspiration with the beautiful feather design based on the eagle from Dortmund’s city flag. The Nike logo was moved to a panel on the front of the neck and a bold jacquard pattern combined the Nike Premier logo with the team’s crest. Thick, elasticated black cuffs and collar with white trims completed the design, which now featured sublimated printing of the logo and sponsor. For many football fans, this shirt conjures up the image of a bloodied Matthias Sammer during a game against Borussia Monchengladbach. Having sustained a wound above his eyebrow, the injury was stapled without anesthetic and Sammer played on, earning the nickname ‘Iron Matthias’.⁣





The 1995/96 shirt marked a move to simpler designs, a white bolt separating the yellow body from black sleeves. The adventurous engineered patterns continued, however, with a graffiti-style ‘BVB’ featuring throughout the fabric. For the first time, the shirt incorporated a stitched Futura logo and BVB badge, alongside the sublimated sponsor. In addition, for domestic games player names would be added – an option also available for the first time for replica kits.⁣

1996/97’s domestic shirt is possibly the most well-recognized of all the null neon era kits despite not featuring in their triumphant European season. A solid yellow body was broken up with the inclusion of two stripes in the side panels, whilst the sleeves featured broad stripes. The stitched badge was retained, with the Futura logo switched for a simpler Nike Swoosh. The pop-up collar returned, with overlapping diagonal panels at the neck completing the design. For European games, a modified version was used for the first time featuring broader changes than just a sponsor switch. Bold stripes featured down the center of the shirt, with black sleeves broken by a series of stripes at mid-length. For the final, the 1997/98 shirt was used with a European sponsor design.⁣

The 1997/98 shirt was the last to feature the distinctive Volt Yellow color. As a sign of future developments, the rich jacquard patterns were gone and a Dri-Fit logo on the sleeve marked the beginning of performance considerations rivaling aesthetics in the design process. With a solid yellow body save for a thin mid-body horizontal band, a black band also ran across the shoulders and lateral side of the sleeves. It was outlined in white and broken by a single yellow stripe at mid-sleeve, with stars on the left side only. The 3D numbers were gone, replaced by simple black figures with a white outline. The final mark of this ending of an era was the replacement of Die Continentale with s.Oliver, a clothing company. A golden era on the pitch was also drawing to a close, as BVB could only manage a 10th place Bundesliga finish with coach Hitzfeld having left the club following their Champions League triumph. Paulo Sousa and Paul Lambert also left the club, and inspirational leader Sammer only made three further appearances before a serious knee injury which ended his career. Despite lavish spending around the turn of the millennium (which nearly collapsed the club), it would be 14 seasons before BVB claimed another major trophy under Jürgen Klopp.⁣







Further information: ⁣

There were also a number of away shirts that featured the Volt Yellow color. For 1995/96, the body of the shirt and accompanying details were black rather than Volt Yellow, whereas for 1996/97 the black and Volt Yellow sections were inverted. A beautiful white version of the 1996/97 European home shirt with only small Volt Yellow highlights was designed for away games, but never worn competitively. Finally, an unusual grey away shirt was made for 1997/98 with only a thin Volt Yellow band on the collar and cuffs (in addition to the Nike logo and BVB crest).⁣

For collectors, BVB shirts from this era vary in rarity and price. Most common are the 95/96 to 97/98 home shirts, which can be obtained with patience on auction sites for around £50-80, or from retailers for £80-120. The earlier home shirts are more difficult to obtain, being £100+ on auction sites or £150+ on the rare occasion they appear on retail sites. Luckily, unofficial copies of these shirts are usually quite poor quality and offer several clues to the beady-eyed collector. Typically, the jacquard patterns are missing or offered as sublimated coloring rather than a woven feature. Spelling mistakes and differences in font on the collar and washing tags are common. If you have access to an original or can obtain good-quality images from a fellow collector or sites such as oldfootballshirts.com, you should be able to spot any rogue replicas. Finally, for further information and photos, I would recommend the excellent book Die Trikotgeschichte von Borussia Dortmund (The Borussia Dortmund Shirt History) by Marc Steinert.⁣