Hello. I’m new here as just found the forum while researching a shirt I have. It’s a has a Adidas Erima label in the football shirt. I believe it may be from 1975/76. But have no clue. the history of the shirt it was found in Spain and had a Spanish club badge applied in the early 80s which has been removed. (The club never used that shirt) Also the owners son wrote his name on the back. Has since faded due to washing. I am trying to date the year it may have been made. I have been lead to believe FC Schalke used the same shirt in the season 75/76. thank you for you help.
The style is from the 70s and it’s at least before 80/81 as the badge that was put on was from that year and it was done within the year of that season here is one in long sleeve that is from 75. But the label is missing. Got it sent yesterday looking for confirmation on the label as I’m not sure either.
Erima has an interesting company history. What I understand from Wikipedia is that Adidas became the main outfitter of the DFB (German football association), but as they did not produce football shirts, they had them made by Erima. Following that, Erima became a leading producer for sports wear, and especially it seems, football - for everything from professional to hobby players. Adidas bought Erima in 1976 as the owner couldn't find someone in his family to continue the company. From then on, Adidas kept shifting the focus for football away from Erima to their main brand and kept taking over their sponsoring contracts. At the beginning of the 90s, Erima's production was shifted to Asia. As it says Made in West Germany, the shirt clearly pre-dates German reunification anyway. I guess it would be interesting to know what the labels looked like pre- and post-1976 as that was obviously a big shift in the company and the question would be if they already showed both company names before Adidas took Erima over. As to what shirts looked like when and which team used which shirt when, I guess football historians would know better. To me, the label looks ok for 70s or 80s, but I am really not current on what football shirts would have looked like at the time.
Ooops, I missed the Erima's company page... there's a company history section that says that the wing logo shown on your label was first used in 1976, after Adidas took Erima over: https://www.erima.eu/en/company?qt-unternehmen___en=1#qt-unternehmen___en - that also shows the Erima company name in the same writing as on your label, but on the 1974 ad below, it's a different font. Going by that, your shirt is earliest from 1976. I also got a google result for an ebay listing for a Grasshoppers #9 match worn shirt (searching with those words that should give you the result) from 1978/79, which has the same label as yours, though the number design differs. So another point for the label of your shirt looking ok for 70s I would say. I see football history pages and selling pages for historical football shirts in my search results, you might also want too look at some of those.
Thank you that is most helpful. It has helped me date them it to 76 The number on the back changed in 77 as I found out through a football collector I. Germany. I also learned that the label later changed to blue Adidas rather than red
