Whenever I’m out, I always like to note down any football shirts that I see. This began as I noticed that I had never seen anyone wearing a Manchester City shirt despite them being one of the most successful teams in the country. This has subsequently changed, as Manchester City gain a larger fan base due to their success. Below are the top 20 clubs whose shirts I have seen most often. I have been doing this for around a year, and live in London, which of course heavily skewers the results. For this reason, I have also included results for different places I have travelled to.

There is of course a heavy bias towards not only English but London clubs, with teams from the city comprising 8/20 of the teams. With all due respect, clubs such as Millwall, Charlton, and Crystal Palace are overrepresented here for geographical reasons. As an Arsenal fan, I can also concede that my own club is disproportionately represented. This is all reflected in the results outside of London and then outside of England. Most of these clubs are traditional big clubs and their placement here is thus explicable. Then, there is PSG due to their recent influx of money and superstars - London also houses a PSG club shop. Inter Miami’s representation is also explicable due to their signing of Lionel Messi. Ronaldo’s Al-Nassr is not far behind and will likely break into the top 20 at some point.

Predictably, England comes out on top here. However, due to London’s diverse population, a wide array of nations and continents are represented. Due to a large amount of Brazilians in London, as well as the worldwide love and respect for Samba football, Brazil is second. As for the other continents, Jamaica (North/Central America), Japan (Asia), and Nigeria (Africa) come out on top, and I am yet to see an Oceanian shirt.

There is a dramatic change here, with Arsenal now joint-bottom and only one other London club (Palace) making the list. Manchester United take the top spot. However, as I have not travelled extensively through the UK since beginning this list, the data are still small, although I would expect this to be fairly representative when extrapolated to a larger sample size. Although Liverpool are of course a huge club - I personally consider them bigger than Manchester United, given their superior European success - it has only really been over the past few months or so that I have seen people wearing Liverpool shirts prevalently, as they have done so well in the league.

No doubt some of these shirts indicate where I have visited, with Sparta Prague perhaps being a dead giveaway. In the case of Hearts, I have not been to Edinburgh (yet!) but 4 of their 5 sightings were due to them happening to play against Cercle Brugge in the Conference League when I was visiting the city. I always give myself a rule of no more than two shirts a day during a match day, to prevent ridiculously skewed statistics. By far, Roma fans are the most loyal to their club, with their top place assured after only one three-day trip when there were no matches played. Indeed, Roma are only in the top 20 generally because of that trip. The next closest are Sparta Prague, however one of the days was on a match day (a Czech cup game). In my experience, you are generally not likely to see local or national shirts of the locations you visit, perhaps predictably due to the international nature of tourism; no doubt more regional peregrinations would lead me to seeing more local kits.

Some additional shirts

Haringey Borough - The lowest ranked team I have seen, Haringey play in the Isthmian League North Division, which is the 8th tier of English football.

Deportivo Mandiyu - The lowest ranked non-English team, who play in the 4th division of Argentine football.

Etoile Sportive du Sahel (Tunisian Ligue Professionelle 1) and CR Belouizdad (Algerian Ligue 1) - The only club sides from Africa.

Sao Paolo - The highest ranked South American side with 3

Al Shabab Al Arabi Club - Arguably the most ‘obscure’ shirt I have ever seen. Al Shabab, who played in the UAE Arabian Gulf League, were actually disbanded in 2017 and merged with a club called Dubai CSC to form a new club called Shaba Al Ahli Club. Since the merger, they have won one league title. With Cerezo Osaka (Japan), they are one of only two non-Saudi Asian teams seen.