Manchester City's FA Cup kit inspiration
The story behind Manchester City's kit for the 2011 FA Cup Final versus Stoke City. Manchester City's kit has been inspired by a telegram found in the archive at Umbro from 1934, when the Manchester-based company supplied the kit for MCFC in the FA Cup final at Wembley.
It was this discovery while researching the project of creating Saturday's shirts that David Blanch, a senior designer at Umbro, discovered the telegram and has created a modern version of the same type font for the player numbers and names, which have been bonded onto the shirts. "Many fonts in football look retro and rigid but this one has a real authenticity about it." 
The telegram of May 5, 1934 which, in a nod to the days of such communication, includes the club's telegraphic address 'Football Manchester', was sent from Maine Road by club secretary Wilf Wild, thanking Humphreys Bros - whose names spawned the Umbro company name - for the " Jerseys , Knickers, Hose, Slips and Anklets" used in the Wembley final seven days earlier. "The fit, quality and smartness of the entire outfit was undoubtedly perfection," Wild wrote.
The shirts and the 'Mercer jackets' which the players will wear onto the pitch feature a number of intricate links to the historical detail of the kits City players have worn at Wembley. Discreetly featured within the numbers on the players' backs is the historic Manchester coat of arms, which City players initially used to wear when they had no crest of their own. Technically a privilege bestowed upon the club by Manchester 's city council, it has generally been a tradition over the past 60 years that City carry the coat of arms in some way when they play at Wembley.
The Manchester coat of arms is also embroidered onto the breast of the jackets City will walk out in, inspired by the overcoat of choice for the late Joe Mercer, and of which only 16 have been made. Mercer took a City side wearing the Manchester coat of arms to its last FA Cup final victory in 1969. The goalkeeping heroics of a young Frank Swift, replete in Jersey, Slip and Anklets, inspired the 2-1 win over Portsmouth 35 years earlier. So will the kit prove inspirational to the current crop of City stars?
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