Juventus
Turin's Juventus is the most popular and successful football club in Italy. Thirty-five national titles, two European titles, three Uefa Cup victories, and a Cup-Winners' Cup to boot.
Andrea Pirlo, Roberto Baggio, Michel Platini, Zbigniew Boniek, Gaetano Scirea, and Zinadine Zidane all wore the renowned black and white stripes to win this silverware.But how did the legendary shirts come to be worn by La Vecchia Signora (The Old Lady)?
It's not all doom and gloom.
The Sport Club Juventus wore white shirts and black shorts when it was founded in 1897, then a pink shirt and black tie owing to an error. The jerseys had faded so badly by 1903 that Juve asked his English friend John Savage if he knew of any shirt suppliers.
The black and white hoops were shipped out to Turin and gave the club is nickname i bianconeri (the black-and-whites)
In recent seasons, Juventus FC as is now known has used a pink second shirt as a nod to its history.
Athletic Club de Bilbao
Athletic Club de Bilbao is notoriously Basque, and its red-and-white striped shirts and black shorts are recognised around the world. Where did they acquire those colours, though? The answer can be found in England…
Football team of the Basques Athletic Club de Bilbao is similar to Yorkshire County Cricket Club in that you had to be born in the area to play for the team.In the Basque Country, this includes both sides of the Pyrenees, as seen by Bixente Lizarazu's 16 appearances for the club in the 1990s.
This fervently patriotic team was formed by British industrialists, as were many other football clubs in Spain.
Bilbao, a significant port on Spain’s north coast, is extremely similar to Southampton, England, in terms of geography, industry, and importance. The football clubs in both cities wear red and white stripes with black shorts. This isn't an accident.
Before 1909, when Bilbao student Juan Elorduy bought up 50 shirts in Southampton on his way home, Athletic Club's original stripe was white, then blue-and-white halves. The colours are identical to those of Bilbao's flag. In 1910, the club adopted its now-famous colours.Surplus shirts from Elorduy's haul were transferred to Athletic's Madrid youth brand — the future Atlético de Madrid – unwittingly leaving Southampton FC's stamp on La Liga twice.
Boca Juniors
Boca Juniors is the famed blue and yellow half of Buenos Aires, Argentina's capital. Despite being behind its cross-city Superclásico rivals River Plate in domestic titles (36 to 30), Boca claims to have a larger fan base across the country.
In 1905, the Atlético Boca Juniors was founded in the rocky port district of La Boca (The Mouth) in the city, called for the place where the Riachuelo river enters the larger Ro de la Plata. It was founded by five Italian immigrants from Genoa, earning the fans the nickname "Xeneizes" (Genoese).Those 30 domestic titles and six Copa Libertadores may never have been won in the iconic azul y amarillo (blue and yellow) if it hadn't been for the need for a replacement shirt.
Boca's colours weren't always blue and yellow...
In 1905, Boca wore a white shirt with thin black vertical stripes before switching to a celeste (sky blue) shirt later that year.After then, there was a year of thin blue vertical stripes until 1906, when Boca played Nottingham de Almagro, who had a shirt similar to Boca's, to see who would preserve it. Boca was defeated.The club decided to adopt the colours of the Swedish Drottning Sophia, which was the first ship to arrive in port. It was blue and yellow, first as a diagonal stripe and then as a horizontal band from 1913 to the present.There have been rumours that Boca used to play in pink, which is reflected in their current away kits, although there is some debate about whether or not this is true.


