There is nothing for it but to doff your heavily branded caps to Manchester United, which has found £40m down the back of its metaphorical sofa, having secured a deal with DHL to sponsor its training kit. The arrangement outstrips what all but a couple of other Premier League clubs pull in for even their shirt sponsorship, with United's chief executive, David Gill, declaring: "This breaks new ground in the English game." Quite so. The kit will be on TV screens only for the brief flashes of pre-match warm-up – and even then not for European games – so DHL is forking out to advertise on something that will primarily be worn around United's well-appointed Carrington training complex.
Indeed, given that no plans have been announced to make the club's training sessions more open to cameras, let's assume that the deal is at least in part a marketing push aimed at the guests who frequent its facilities most frequently. Namely, the much-courted football hack demographic – or the Scribblers' Pound, as it is known in consumer circles. Though the spending power of this group has yet to rival that of other lazily stereotyped tribes such as the Pink Pound or the Pre-School Pound, Her Majesty's Sports Press is clearly being targeted for its ability to influence the wider market. "Get a pair of DHL jogging bottoms on Woolly Woolnough," a made-up Old Trafford insider tells me, "and you see an almost immediate spike in the Asian retail figures."
Furthermore, I am reassured to read that United is now actively looking beyond traditional areas of branding. The message is that the training kit deal is far from the end of it. And why not? Every garment or accessory in the footballer's wardrobe should be regarded as virgin snow into which some sponsor or other might stamp its imprimatur, and I imagine Mr Gill is already firming up the possibilities.
Clearly they should begin with sponsored sleepsuits for night flights. One day we will marvel that players for the game's biggest financial powerhouse ever flew home from European ties, or out to summer tours, wearing anything other than branded winceyette rompers. The convention for squads to pose on the plane steps, or to stalk through aircrafts looking grumpy, would appear the ideal opportunity to do so while drawing people's eyes to the branding of an electronics firm or brewery.
The club suit is beginning to look hopelessly undermonetised, given that all we hear about them is that they are made by M&S or whoever, when they are crying out for more logos. The DHL-branded training kits will doubtless soon be available in the club shop for sale to completist fans and so, ideally, would the club suits, allowing fans to share in the magic of combining sharp tailoring with shilling for a fast-food chain. If sponsors are worried about how little wear the club suit would get, they should be aware that the garment is a more integral part of some players' sartorial arsenal than others. Did you see Luis Boa Morte's appearance on Cribs? It was remarkable for the fact that he lived in a modest semi, had a Vauxhall Corsa in the drive, and his wardrobe contained a single suit – his club suit. I know. It was like he was openly urinating on the values of an entire generation. I can only hope that MTV has locked this blasphemy in a vault marked "NEVER REBROADCAST", as Viacom tried to do with the South Park episode in which Tom Cruise is trapped in a closet.
The next logical step would be washbag sponsorship, which would see players come off the bus for away games clutching not the standard Louis Vuitton but a club-issue toiletries tote, perhaps bearing the logo of CK In2U, or one of the more misery-engendering online casinos.
Finally, it is a sad fact of the modern game that every now and then a player will end up having to defend himself against trumped-up charges of disco-brawling, or demanding a Phil Collins record with menace. For this, he will need a courtroom suit, which is of course different from a party suit, and should be carefully targeted club issue. There is no earthly reason why denying an assault charge should not be combined with promoting a kiddies' charity. Of course, should a player be before a judge to obtain a superinjunction, his kit would ideally be seen by nobody at all. Yet ought wearing an item in camera really preclude its being monetised by any truly enterprising 21st-century club? The way things are going, only a dinosaur would suggest such a thing.
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