Words and interview by Josh Phillips
Photography by Matthew Wilson
It’s a warm day in early August in Central Manchester, and I’m meeting ex-Leeds, Doncaster & The New Saints winger Billy Whitehouse.
Billy, a footballer and avid shirt fan, has been working with Squadra on various projects for a few months. We have a mutual understanding of what we love and don’t love when it comes to the aesthetics of football, but conversations about Billy’s actual career have been short and sweet. I’m looking forward to digging into the finer points of football shirts from the perspective of a real, actual player.
Fresh off the back of his signing for Alfreton Town in the National League North, I’m keen to hear his perspective on his early career, his stint in the Champions League with TNS, the trials of designing your own kit, and memories of Ronaldinho ripping Real Madrid a new one.
JP: Hi Billy, thanks for joining me as the first guest on this new interview series.
BW: Great to see you.
JP: As a part of this series, I’ll be interviewing all sorts of people from lots of different fields and asking about their love of football and football shirts. I’m talking artists, content creators, collectors and the like. Elephant in the room here: you’re an actual footballer. These shirts are workwear for you, just like anybody who wears a uniform while working. Does this unique perspective affect your view of football shirts as a whole?
BW: Yeah, I think obviously that comes down to the key differences between the tailored player-spec versions of shirts that are worn on the pitch and the fan versions that we wear and collect off it. I also think that, as a player, you approach the kit as a whole; shorts, socks, boots, and how they’re fitted to your specific preferences so you can give the best performance for the team.
JP: I am aware that you're a boots fan as well, I sadly missed the boat on that particular rabbit hole of collecting. Do you find that your tastes as a boot collector and shirt collector match up?
BW: I would say they align more now than they did when I was younger. I always wanted the newest, freshest pair of football boots in the craziest colours, whereas now I often find I am keeping an eye out for boots that I can pick out from the last decade or so that I maybe didn’t appreciate when they were newly-released.
JP: Do you find that what you like in your match shirts are the things that you look for in the shirts you’ll pick up as a collector?
BW: Honestly? No. From my point of view as a collector and enjoyer of football shirts, I look for pieces that will maybe look a little oversized, perhaps a boxy fit for that classic “vintage” look. When I’m playing, though, I need something that’s fitted to my body. Slim fitting, tight to me, basically anything that will mean that the opposition can’t pull at my shirt…
JP: It’s like the old Kappa design philosophy from the late 90’s, if the shirt is as tight to your skin as possible then defenders can’t get a hold of your shirt to pull it.
BW: Exactly.
JP: Staying on the topic of on-field styling, which side do you fall on the various style options available to players? Long or short sleeves? Tucked or untucked? We already know your prefer a tighter fit on the pitch.
BW: I’ve never worn a long-sleeved shirt out on the pitch, actually. In the last six months though, I’ve definitely been drawn to trying it out. I haven’t tucked either, really. When I was a youth player we were always forced to tuck our shirts in, so I feel like my view on it now is a reaction to not having that option when I was younger. I wouldn’t say I’m crazy about having the shirts be super tight for no reason though, I think if the material isn’t made for them to be worn in that way then they shouldn’t be. We see a few things nowadays where the shirt’s material isn’t the best and the players are drowning in sweat because it’s stuck inside their kit.
JP: We’re talking about Aston Villa and Castore’s “sweat-gate” here, aren’t we?
BW: Yeah, things like that will definitely have an impact on how free you feel to play your own game. On the other hand, though, the opposite happens too. I’ve worn stuff in my career that is so baggy that I feel I might take off if the wind hits me while I'm running. There’s got to be a balance.
JP: Speaking of tighter fitting jerseys, that brings me onto the first of your own shirts that we’re looking at today…
2014-15 DONCASTER ROVERS HOME SHIRT BY AVEC
JP: Your professional debut shirt for Doncaster Rovers. Do you remember the first game that you wore this in?
BW: I don’t remember too much about the date or the game, but I do remember it was early on in the 2014-15 season against Burton Albion. Johnstone’s Paint Trophy, I think.
JP: For any player, their professional debut shirt is sure to be one of their most prized possessions. Do you remember the first time you saw your name printed on the back with your very own squad number and everything?
BW: Yeah, definitely. It’s an interesting one, personally. I had always been a youth player here at Doncaster, and I remember in the pre-season for the 2014-15 season I was sent away with the U-18’s squad to Sweden instead of going away with the First Team. There were four of us tipped to go into the men’s side that season and three of them did end up doing pre-season in Portugal with the first team squad, meaning I was the only one of those four who was still with the Under 18’s. That was tough for me as a younger player. I felt like I was left behind. That meant that when I was eventually called in to the first team squad later on after pre-season that I was the last one of the group to pick my number and then I was the last one to see my shirt all printed up with my own name and squad number, so I just feel like I understood so deeply what it meant for me as a local lad.
JP: You ended up choosing 32 as your squad number. Why did you go for that number?
BW: I was told that I could pick any number above 25, and David Beckham had just had the number 32 at AC Milan and PSG.
JP: You have that debut number tattooed on your hand, it obviously means a lot. Is there any reason that you’ve always gone back to that number throughout your career? Watching you play, you suit a number 10 or a 7 more than 32.
BW: It’s always meant a lot to me, as my debut number. We’re suspicious, us footballers. We stick to what we believe has been lucky for us; whether that be boots, rituals, numbers…
JP: Speaking of the number 10, we’ve got another shirt here from a player that I know you have always looked up to…
2006-08 CHELSEA HOME SHIRT BY ADIDAS
JP: You’ve mentioned in the past that this was the shirt that kicked off your journey as a collector…
BW: …and as a player too.
JP: Really?
BW: Absolutely, I was never one of these kids that was glued to a ball from infancy. The first two players that made me want to be a footballer myself both wore number 10. I remember I saw Ronaldinho destroy Real Madrid in El Clásico in 2005 and had the Bernabéu give him a standing ovation. Seeing that made me want to want to just get up and play football. It just flipped a switch in my 10 year-old brain. And then I knew I wanted to be a pro when I saw Joe Cole score that outrageous goal against Sweden in the 2006 World Cup. I just felt like he moved differently to the English players that I grew up with before that. He wasn’t a normal English player and that’s why I idolised him. That’s why I love this Chelsea shirt from around that period because it’s when I really fell in love with how he played. I remember just watching clips of him: nutmegs, rabonas, stepovers. Proper street football.
JP: I have to confess that I loved that Chelsea side a lot as a kid, too. That whole era, the players they had in Mourinho’s first stint as manager, many of whom were brilliant but have been almost forgotten by the football-watching masses today. I’m thinking of Eidur Gudjohnsen, Arjen Robben isn’t remembered for playing for Chelsea either…
BW: Crespo.
JP: Shevchenko.
BW: Scary, isn’t it?
JP: You know we could sit and name them all now for an hour.
BW: Yeah, no doubt.
JP: Asier Del Horno.
BW: Khalid Boulahrouz.
JP: Other than Joe Cole, then, which players do you think have the biggest influences on your career and how you play?
BW: There’s a few. Growing up, I watched a lot of La Liga. Revista De La Liga was a huge deal for me every weekend. So many of my favourites played in Spain at that time or have played in Spain since: Riquelme, Ronaldinho, Aimar, Isco. It’s that street football style that I spoke about, really. Since then, I’ve been influenced by players that stick out in that way, players like Adam Lallana. Lallana has a bit of that Joe Cole thing about him, he wasn’t really traditionally “English” in his style of play. I’ve mentioned in the past that I love Ivan Perišić and his style as a wide player. Then, Josip Iličić…
JP: We’ve spoken in the past about about Iličić. I know he’s a big influence on you.
BW: He’s like he rest of them that I have spoken about. They’re all mavericks and have that certain “street” style of play. I just feel like I have always related to football played in that way.
JP: You let these sort of influences show up in the shirt you’ve designed for your charity, Mind Over Matter, didn’t you?
2022 MIND OVER MATTER HOME SHIRT BY MONARCH
BW: Absolutely. I can’t believe I didn’t mention Zidane just then, by the way. When I design these shirts for the Mind Over Matter team, I’m trying to evoke the look of these older players and the iconic kits that they wore. Our current home shirt has a lace-up collar inspired by the one Zizou wore with France at Euro 1996, for example. Our away strip is another nod to a favourite look of mine, the famous pink of Palermo. When you design these shirts, you have to be willing to look differently at these iconic elements from classic kits, designing and combining them to make something functional and fashionable. Shirts nowadays have to be fashionable.
JP: They have to be, don’t they?
BW: People are bored of generic blank templates. Football fashion is it’s own thing. People don’t want to wear something that looks ugly. When you design shirts, you have to keep all of your references in check. Despite all of these nods to classics, you have to combine them in a way that still looks attractive to people.
JP: How do you hold yourself to that? It must be hard sometimes not to try and remake something that you like that has been done before.
BW: A good way of keeping yourself on the straight and narrow in that respect is to collaborate with interesting people. The Mind Over Matter team is sponsored by the band Bring Me The Horizon, so having them involved also allows other creatives to have their say on which adjustments to make to an idea.
JP: With your Mind Over Matter kits, you’ve managed to blend this language of sportswear design from these iconic 90’s brands and combine that with all of the benefits of modern clothing production. In terms of fabric technology and fixtures, this is clearly a modern item that combines the best of both worlds. This philosophy has also characterised much of the football apparel industry as a whole recently. Do you see football shirt production as a whole continuing in this direction in the coming years?
BW: I hope so, for sure. I mean, in my opinion, the shirts we’ve seen released by Premier League clubs ahead of the 2024-25 season have fallen really flat. They’re seemingly focusing too much on performance over creating something eye-catching or unique. They’re using all of the modern technology with not enough consideration for how it might look out and about on real people. Saying that, I think that the 2018 World Cup range from Adidas was brilliant. Original designs with nods to the past, mixed with that modern technology for the players. The namesets on those shirts too…
JP: The boxy font was brilliant. I always think of James Rodríguez when I see those shirts.
BW: Shirts really make us remember players, don’t they?
JP: You spoke about the Prem there, how do you feel about recent shirts from some of the other big leagues?
BW: I like some of the kits made by German clubs in recent years. They’re getting the balance right. Italian clubs are coming back with some good kits, too. They had a few terrible years for a minute there. Spanish clubs are also looking good, despite so many of their big clubs very rarely moving away from their traditional looks.
JP: Speaking of those two big La Liga clubs, we saw the backlash when Barcelona wore a mainly white shirt recently in an attempted bring back a largely-forgotten shirt worn in the late 70’s. This, obviously, annoyed a huge amount of their fanbase. You can’t wear the colour mostly associated with you biggest and oldest rival. You just can’t. Do you think that this story shows that modern shirts have to be produced with nods to the past that actually make sense? It sort of seemed that Nike did that just because they needed to somehow pull some new inspiration from somewhere.
BW: Absolutely. Sometimes it’s better to stick to what work rather than changing the on-field identity of the club and then trying to come up with a reason for it after the fact.
JP: When we talk about changing identity, right now I’m thinking of Venezia. I was recently struck by the fantastically minimalist aesthetic of their recent 2024-25 pre-season shirts. These were assembled fairly quickly after the end of the club’s deal with Kappa, but the clean, simple designs are just so different from their previous high-fashion-aspiring output in the past. We’re also expecting them to start the league season with these kits, too. Do you think such an extreme left turn with regards to on-field aesthetics will be replicated across the footballing world? Or is this a one-off?
BW: I think, in general, we could see a conscious move from some sides to tone down their designs by removing some of the garish sponsors, wherever they can. I’m always thinking about the fact that Barcelona produced some of their most beloved shirts in the era before they wore a sponsor.
JP: Which of those shirts would you class as your favourite, if you had to?
BW: The 2005-06 home, in particular. I don’t always think a shirt being sponsorless means it is necessarily a good shirt, though. I mean, look at Puma’s 2021/22 range of third shirts. Many of those were released without sponsors and it just didn’t work in my opinion.
JP: Sometimes, it’s better to stick to what works, doesn’t it? Like the number 32…
2018-19 THE NEW SAINTS WELSH CUP FINAL SHIRT BY LEGEA
JP: You had quite a successful stint at TNS, winning a Welsh league and cup double in your first season. How did you find the culture and atmosphere at a team like that, where winning EVERY league game and all domestic trophies is the expectation?
BW: I enjoyed the fact that we were hated by everyone else in the league. That pressure can either break you or turn you into a winner. The first year I was at TNS was crazy. We win the league in 2018-19 and qualified for the Champions League. I had been playing in non-league a few months before that, it was really crazy to think that we’d soon be playing European football.
JP: I can imagine the shock of that contrast. From a few loan spells in local non-league to playing at Copenhagen away in Europe. We all know that the Champions League starball patch makes any shirt better. How did it feel to play with one on your shirt for the first time? How were you feeling in the days before those ties?
BW: Yeah, the whole setting of a Champions League match and the run-up is mad. Getting to the hotel, going to the stadium the day before, training on the pitch in this huge empty ground. People spotting you in the street because they know you’re in town to play their team tonight. This isn’t even the official group stage at this point, just the preliminary qualifying, but the talent on show is a joke. There were players in that Copenhagen squad when we played them that have since moved on to top European leagues, one of their players moved to Hoffenheim the next day after we played them.
JP: This shirt, the one that you were given to wear against Connah’s Quay in the Welsh Cup final of 2019, has got the match details of the final on the front. That must be quite special for you to have, surely?
BW: It really is. Even though I didn’t play in the final, it’s still special to have this as a mark of my contribution to that cup win. I think I’ll appreciate these things a lot more in the years to come. Same with the few swapped shirts I have. That’s something I regret, not swapping shirts more. I didn’t swap shirts at all in the matches against Copenhagen and Ludogorets, if you can believe it.
JP: I feel like you’ve seen a lot of what football has to offer: EFL, non-league, playing for a massive club like Leeds, a couple of loans, a little European adventure, a top flight winners’ medal. Have you ever had any plans to see even more of the football world in your career?
BW: I would always love to experience Spanish football, whether as part of my playing career or afterwards. In terms of past opportunities, there were some interactions with 2 MLS clubs when I left Leeds, I went out to train with one of them and everything. Then there was another thing with a South African club too, but nothing solid ever materialised in terms of a plan for what a move might actually look like. I would love to maybe move, pick up a new language, and get involved with football abroad when my playing career finishes. It’s always just made sense to me. As I said earlier, I don’t feel I have always been traditionally “English” in my approach to football.
JP: You’re still active as a player, of course, and you’ve just signed for Alfreton Town in the National League North. How do you find that you balance your own personal approach, philosophy and play-style with the changing demands of clubs, coaches and managers over the years?
BW: I think a good portion of it comes from having a base understanding of your role and the space you occupy on the pitch. You have to be confident of your own role in the team, always. Being a wide player, it comes down to being as productive as possible in the final third. At Alfreton, we’re playing a little more direct, so as a winger I need to make sure I’m always in the most advantageous position to receive the ball. Also, it means staying on top of your responsibilities defensively; getting back and helping out. So much comes down to your position and your awareness of where you are in relation to play as a whole. The manager and the club obviously know your qualities before they signs you, so it’s just about doing what you do well as often as you can.
JP: Something I’ve always thought as a fan… are players bothered by the design of the shirts they wear? Does it help you as a player when your shirts look a certain way?
BW: You’ll like this. When I was at Chorley, the kitman once asked which of the prototype designs they should go with for the upcoming season. He knew I was opinionated about the kits, so he went out of his way to ask when they were planning the next seasons kits. In general though, I think as players we just value a strong club identity as a part of the shirt design, particularly the home design. We obviously appreciate a funky away or third shirt as much as anyone, too. It helps when clubs have a wide but defined selection of colours to choose from for all 3 kits. I think Venezia, Parma and Palermo are good at that. Without looking it up, you can usually guess what colours they’ll be wearing in any given season.
JP: Fancy some quick-fire questions?
BW: Go on then.
JP: Adidas, Puma or Nike?
BW: Adidas.
JP: Which is the most underrated shirt brand, in your opinion?
BW: Joma. You know I love Atalanta.
JP: Which shirt swaps in your career do you regret not going through with?
BW: I have 2 here, actually. Rasmus Falk from Copenhagen, and a guy called Zeca from Copenhagen too. Falk was unbelievable, he played like Modric against us. Zeca was different, he couldn’t move so quickly but his technique was a joke. He was their captain against us, I believe. I’m lucky to have a lot of good swaps, given to me by friends that have played in the Prem, MLS, other leagues and cool shirts to have. And the story isn’t over yet…
JP: Exactly, a decent FA cup tie at Alfreton and you might add another Premier League side to your swaps collection.
BW: Who knows? Hopefully.
JP: Okay, another quick one. Brand new with tags shirts; keep the tags on or take them off and wear the shirt?
BW: It depends. If it’s a shirt that you can get easily or looks amazing to wear day-to-day, then take the tags off. If it’s particularly rare or has some historical significance, just leave it.
JP: Final one, which would your all time top 3 shirts to get if money or rarity wasn’t a factor?
BW: Ronaldinho’s match-worn shirt from the Clásico I mentioned earlier. Zidane’s headbutt shirt is another, and an Isco match-worn shirt from Malaga. You know I love Isco. Legend.
