How Clubs Got Their Colours: Portugal’s Seleção

Portugal’s nation side – A Seleção (The Selection) – has one of the most iconic and beguiling kits in world football. That wonderful port wine or burgundy shirt – accompanied over the years by green, white or matching burgundy shorts – is unmistakable. Eusebio, Figo, Ronaldo, Futre…it’s a shirt worn by legends. It reflects the colours of the nation’s flag, so let’s delve into the origins of that unique and spectacular heraldry.

Football arrived in mainland Portugal and Madeira in the 1870s and ‘80s, with the first cup competition up and running by 1894. The traditional ‘Big Three’ of FC Porto, Sport Lisboa e Benfica and Sporting Clube de Portugal were all up and running by 1906, but a national football association – the União Portuguesa de Futebol (UPF – Portuguese Football Union) was not formed until 26 August 1914. It became affiliated with FIFA that year, but the advent of the Great War, which lasted four years, the Portuguese national side did not play its first match until 1921.

For that match, Portugal’s Seleção wore black shirts and white short in Madrid, where the team lost 3-1 to Spain at the Campo de la Calle O’Donnell in front of 14,000. Portugal’s first international goal was scored by Alberto Augusto from the penalty spot on 75 minutes. The black kit lasted until the late twenties when the kit took on the predominant colour of the national flag – deep red – but with blue shorts. By this time, Portugal was under a military dictatorship that would last until 1974.

The origins of the Portuguese flag

Why does Portugal wear red and green? It’s all about politics…

Portugal’s First Republic ushered out the monarchy in 1910 and ditched the royal flag – a blue and white flag with the coat of arms. The new – and current – flag kept the offset layout, with a smaller green section to represent ‘hope’ and a larger red section standing for the blood of the nation. 

An armillary sphere celebrating Portugal’s seafaring history and the traditional Portugal shield overlaid. The shield features seven castles and five blue shields on a white background. The castles represent seven castles captured from the Moors and the five shields stand for five defeated Moorish kings. More on the Portuguese flag history here. It’s pretty standard that countries wear the colours of their flag – notable exceptions being Germany (white doesn’t feature on its flag) and Italy, which wears the Azzurro (blue) of the house of Savoy.

During the thirties, Portugal also used a white shirt with the five blue shields on it and blue shorts. When Portugal played unofficial friendlies against a Spanish side drawn from Nationalist-held areas during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), Portugal wore white shirts and blue shorts. Spain wore blue. It would appear both sides avoided wearing red – the traditional home colour for both sides – because the colour was associated with communism, their enemy! Indeed, Portugal’s dictatorship asked Benfica to amend their nickname from Os Vermelhos (The Reds) to Os Encarnados (The Scarlets). You can read more about this complex period of Iberian history in my upcoming book, The Defiant: A History of Football Against Fascism (out 10 Oct).

I am a massive fan of the mid-80s offering from Adidas (see footage from the 1984 Euros semi-final versus France below – absolute classic match) and was also at Euro 2016 when the Seleção wore the famous teal number against Hungary. Portugal went on to win the tournament, of course.

Anyway, that’s why Portugal wears red and green, due to the flag introduced by the First Republic. 

There is loads more on Outside Write to explore on Portuguese football. And if you’d like to know more about the roots of the game in Portugal and elsewhere, check out my debut book, Origin Stories: The Pioneers Who Took Football to the World.