What do you get when you combine Manchester City and the Oasis reunion? Well, arguably the most popular City shirt of all time.
When Pep Guardiola’s side kicked off their Champions League campaign against Inter Milan at the Etihad Stadium a fortnight ago, they did so wearing their new ‘Definitely City’ kit, designed by Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, a lifelong City fan.
It had gone on sale a week earlier and smashed all club records: on the first day, it topped any kit in City’s history, with huge orders from the United States, Japan and South Korea, as well as Manchester.
“He couldn’t believe that he had been asked to be a part of designing a football kit for his club,” Serena Gosling, director of retail and licensing at the City Football Group, tells The Athletic.
“He couldn’t come to the Inter game, but he sat watching it with his kids and was blown away that this was something he helped design.”
Considering that Noel and his brother, Liam, had just sold out 19 UK tour dates for the Oasis reunion next summer, amid unprecedented demand, it is strange to think that much else could stir the soul, and yet Noel’s involvement in the “unique but definitely striking” jersey, as he calls it, has somehow managed it.
Launching at the same time as the reunion has been perfect for City, although it was a complete coincidence. Football shirts are designed at least two years before their release and during a meeting in 2022, a member of City’s retail department suggested that a kit tying into the 30th anniversary of the release of Definitely Maybe, Oasis’ debut album, might be a good idea.
At that point, just as it would have been only a couple of months ago, an Oasis reunion would have seemed impossible. Noel and Liam had not spoken in years and regularly jibed at each other in public but on that 30th anniversary of Definitely Maybe’s release, August 27, not only was the City third kit launched, but the band also confirmed that they were getting back together.
“The stars were aligned for us for this one,” Gosling says. “The reunion was a huge secret, we had no idea.”
Josele Angulo, a key player at Puma, confirms the secrecy. “We had no idea,” he tells The Athletic.
“The whole marketing plan was around the day of the anniversary of the album but he kept the reunion really secret, he never mentioned anything.
“But he knew the launch date and everything, so maybe he planned it. We don’t know.”
A fortnight ago, Gallagher told fans at a secretive event for City supporters — attendees had to hand their phones in on entry — that only eight people knew of the Oasis reunion before the official release, and that he had been keeping secrets for a long time.
He was first approached while attending a City home game in Puma’s hospitality box. Gallagher is close to the club and the sportswear brand — he, Stockport band Blossoms, Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr and Hacienda DJ Mike Pickering were shown City’s paisley shirt design seven months before release in 2019 — and in the press release for the Definitely City kit, he says it took him five seconds to agree when he was asked to play a role in the design process.
“We had already made an initial mock-up so we presented it to him and he was like, ‘I love this, guys, no more reason to talk, let’s just make the deal happen’,” Angulo says.
City then enlisted the help of cult shirt reseller Classic Football Shirts, whose main warehouse is down the road from the Etihad, to bring together a collection of old shirts for Gallagher to run the rule over and establish what ideas would be possible.
“He was very opinionated on a lot of them, in both ways,” Gosling laughs. “There was quite a lot of swearing going on. ‘I effing love this one. I effing hated that one. Oh, that one was awful’.”
The core pale yellow colour, taken from the album cover of Definitely Maybe, featured in the initial mock-up but other features changed across that day, with designers making live updates on computer screens as they went along. The sonic waves that emanate from the City crest were Gallagher’s idea.
That session took place at the studio at City’s training ground but they needed a much bigger space when it came to the ambitious effort to market the shirt by recreating the Definitely Maybe album cover itself.
“Anything that touched on or went near to the Oasis brand had to be treated sensitively,” Gosling says. Josele adds: “We used an acoustic Noel version of ‘Live Forever’, we couldn’t use the Oasis one. Everything that we did was done carefully and checked with Noel’s team.”
The original cover shot was taken in the living room of Oasis guitarist Bonehead’s (actual name: Paul Arthurs) flat in Didsbury, Manchester, and features, among other things, framed pictures of former City midfielder Rodney Marsh, United winger George Best and musician Burt Bacharach.
“We replicated everything in one studio,” Angulo says. “It took days to basically build all the set, it was a really interesting process overall, you need to take care of so many details.
“Like the position of the lamp, for example. There was a flamingo on the chimney as well, a lot of different things that we really needed to look into because we wanted to make it as authentic as possible.”
The new version has been City-fied even further, with the framed pictures replaced with shots of club legends Colin Bell and Sergio Aguero, as well as the front of the Etihad Stadium — although they missed a trick in not replacing the cigarettes and alcohol with Kovacic and Gvardiol.
Mateo Kovacic was there, along with Manuel Akanji, Ederson, Kyle Walker and Jess Park, as well as Guardiola and Gallagher, and the biggest challenge proved to be getting them all together in the same place at the same time.
“It took us months to be honest,” Josele says, although they eventually managed it during the run-in last season.
“Normally we have a specific time with the talents, with Pep, with the players, with Noel, but everyone was so chilled that at the end they stayed even longer, they were chatting and we were saying, ‘Yeah, guys, we want to take the pictures’, but they were like, ‘Nah wait, wait, wait’, and they were just talking and talking.
“I have never seen Pep so happy in a photoshoot. He’s normally super good, but in this one, he was even more happy.”
The night of the unveiling largely went to plan, with City’s women beating Paris FC 5-0 as they wore the shirt for the first time, although in the men’s game against Inter, Akanji confused the yellow-clad referee’s assistant for a team-mate.
“I liked the kit a lot, but I got confused with the referee on the sideline and thought it was Bernardo and passed the ball to him,” Akanji told reporters after the match.
Typically for an adventurous football shirt, social media reviews were mixed. “If this City strip really was co-designed by Noel Gallagher I’d suggest sticking to music,” former Sky Sports presenter Richard Keys posted on X. “It’s awful.”
City, though, know their audience: every time they release a new strip, thousands of supporters from the UK and overseas, of all genders and ages, are asked to rate it against other shirts from the past.
That research suggests that the ‘special’ kits, as they are referred to at the club, with a story behind them, are big hits. In the past, City and Puma have released kits related to iconic Manchester nightclub the Hacienda, the Castlefield area of the city centre and the music-inspired paisley design.
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“We’ve seen over the last few years that we had a subsection of fans who love these special kits,” Gosling says. “Some people love the home kit because it’s the home kit and that means something, but there are other fans who really buy into these slightly different special kits that maybe have a different story from outside the club.”
The club’s away kit for this season, for example, is another big hit. A homage to their 1999 play-off final victory over Gillingham, its day-one sales make it the most popular away shirt in the club’s history, and third best-sold overall, selling huge numbers in Manchester in particular.
But the Definitely City kit has had a huge global pull and its first day of sales contributed to the second-highest day of sales revenue ever for City, only behind the launch of the commemorative treble-winning shirt last summer.
Any Puma gear that Guardiola wears generally sells out quickly, too, and on that record-breaking day of revenue, only the shirt itself sold more units than the navy bomber jacket that he wore while playing the guitar for the album cover shoot.
“I think we knew it was going to be successful,” Gosling says. “We know our fanbase loves Oasis and really loves Noel Gallagher so I’m sure it would have done well, but I’m absolutely sure the Oasis reunion generated much more interest than it would have done.
“I didn’t expect it. I never expected I’d be saying this is the best-selling kit that we’ve ever ever launched on day one.”
(Top photo: Puma/Manchester City)
