For the life of me, I thought I'd already written a post on Aldershot when I completed the National League teams, but I must have just done the research and then never actually got round to writing it. So I owe the club an apology, especially because, of all the clubs in England, this one can boast of representing one of the finest institutions in the land today – the British Army. Before we get to that, Aldershot as a football club is itself quite the tale of battle and comebacks. It's a story of one of English football's most remarkable rebirths. The original Aldershot F.C. was founded in 1926 and spent much of its history in the Football League, achieving promotion from the Fourth Division in 1973 and becoming the first winners of the Football League play-offs in 1987, beating Wolverhampton Wanderers. They adopted a great badge in 1973 too: a red and blue shield – the Army colours – with a cannon on it for "Shots", which had become their nickname, and was entirely suited to a town that was home to the Army's HQ. However, despite this success – and a cracking badge – they ended up more than £1.2 million in debt, and this led to the club's liquidation in March 1992. Determined not to lose football in the town, supporters quickly formed Aldershot Town F.C., a "phoenix club" – a new club rising from the ashes of its predecessor. And so their new badge sort of designed itself: the Phoenix. Beginning life in the Isthmian League, Aldershot Town won the National League title in 2007–08 and were promoted to League Two, marking the first time the new phoenix club had reached the Football League. They spent five seasons there, reaching the League Two play-offs in 2009–10 before being relegated back to the Conference in 2013. In 2025, Aldershot Town achieved one of the greatest moments in its history by winning the FA Trophy at Wembley, defeating Spennymoor Town 3–0 to claim the first major national cup competition in the club's history. However, last season saw the club struggle near the bottom of the National League table, narrowly avoiding relegation. So that's Aldershot the club – and their Phoenix badge. The club was saved by its fans, who have since been rewarded with EFL football and recent Trophy success. But what of the town itself? What of the Army connection? Well, for a long time it was a tiny little place, attracting little more than sheep farmers to the local church's land and little else. A manor house was built, but things only really began to get interesting in the Victorian era. First, a turnpike (toll road) was built through the town, connecting London to Farnborough. The idea of a turnpike was that you paid for a decent road to travel on – and a safe one. But the local operators struggled to protect their paying customers, and highway robbers ("Your money or your life" types), including the famous Dick Turpin, would routinely rob travellers. In fact, so notorious was the area that people reported sightings of the urban legend Spring-Heeled Jack – a half-devil, half-man type creature in a cape who could leap great heights. A sort of Home Counties Batman. He supposedly preyed on passers-by – or at least he did in the new London "penny dreadful" stories that were being printed at the time. However, Aldershot's history was about to change dramatically. In 1854, the British Army realised the value of having land where it could routinely practise and train troops. Such efforts had always been largely ad hoc before; something more professional and permanent was needed. It also had to be close to London, have good transport links, and be cheap enough to buy. In stepped the town of Aldershot. The heathlands were still mostly used by the odd sheep herder. A deal was struck, and in marched the British Army. Wooden huts were built to house the troops, and Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, took a keen interest in the site, funding a permanent library building called The Prince Consort's Library to educate future Army officers. It still stands and is in use today, housing a large collection of military books and records. It also came to house a statue of the Duke of Wellington – the general who defeated Napoleon in 1815 at Waterloo. What is superb about this statue is that the bronze comes from melted-down and recycled French cannons. The Crimean War of the 1850s saw thousands more troops based permanently in Aldershot, and soon those wooden huts gave way to brick barracks. It was such a large and convenient site that it soon came to house the Army leadership too, and it became the home of the British Army – something it remains to this day. During the First World War, having a place like Aldershot became vital to winning the war. In 1914, the British Army had sent almost its entire strength into France in a force known as the British Expeditionary Force, around 100,000 men. Kept historically small by European standards (Britain had the world's largest navy to keep it safe – it didn't really have much need for a large army), it was nonetheless exceptionally well trained. Trained at Aldershot. In the opening battles with the Germans, enemy troops are supposed to have complained to their commanders that the British Army had endless numbers of machine guns because every time they advanced, they were met with a hail of deadly fire. However, it was merely the skill with which the average "Tommy" could wield his Lee-Enfield rifle that convinced the Germans that such accurate and sustained fire could only be achieved by machine-gun trickery. However, despite being superbly skilled, they were also heavily outnumbered and, in just under a year, while they successfully did their job in blocking the German advance into France, most had ended up as casualties. Britain needed a new army. Fast. In stepped General Kitchener, famous at the time for being an old war hero from Sudan. Indeed, one of Sudan's best football clubs today, Al-Merrikh SC, was founded by students from a school set up by Kitchener's army in 1902. Kitchener was given the job of recruiting a new army. It is his face on the famous recruitment poster, and he adopted a new system of promising to keep friends and family together if they joined together – the so-called "Pals Battalions". He was able to recruit more than a million men, most of whom would be trained, at least for part of their training, at Aldershot. Aldershot helped build the modern British Army and played a vital role in Britain's war effort against Imperial Germany. It has been estimated that, at any one time, around 20% of all British soldiers during the First World War were based at Aldershot. During the Second World War, it came to play a similar role, but this time especially for the Canadians. Canadian men who joined the Army travelled to Aldershot to undergo their basic training – 330,000 of them in total. The Canadian Army to this day holds the honorary "Keys to the Town" in acknowledgement of their contributions and sacrifices. More recently, in 1971, two years before the original football club's promotion, the town suffered one of the worst terrorist attacks in British history. The IRA detonated a car bomb outside the barracks, killing seven and injuring nineteen, all civilian support staff. The town itself and the Army barracks had until then been largely open and integrated. This attack caused the barracks to erect walls and fences to separate it from the town proper. Within these fences, known as Aldershot Military Town, are around 10,000 people connected to the Army in one way or another. It also boasts its own football stadium, home to the Army's football team and the site of many inter-regiment games and tournaments. So there we have it. Aldershot. One of the most important and influential towns in the country. And, just like the phoenix on their badge, once again their team is looking to make another comeback. In April 2026, former Premier League goalkeeper Scott Davies, who had played for Aldershot in his early career, was appointed manager and tasked with rebuilding the squad. Since taking charge, Davies has moved quickly to recruit new players and reshape the team – 12 new signings so far at the time of writing, and we are still only in July. Much like the club itself, a good number of those players are themselves also enjoying a rebirth and looking to reignite their careers once more. Let's see what happens. Up The Shots.

Middlesbrough. I’ll be honest. I’ve delayed doing this badge because it just looked a bit too straightforward. A lion. It would come from the crest of some local lord – and that would be it. Aha – not quite. Well, sort of. But that’s only one tiny bit of it. This lion tells a tale that stretches from before the Norman invasion right up to the Industrial Revolution and makes it instantly one of my favourite badges – so, without further ado, let’s do Middlesbrough FC the honour, and #GetTheBadgeIn. Let’s begin, as we often do, with the name – as that one predates most of what follows. Middle Borough. As the name suggests, it alludes to it being in the middle of two points. In this case, halfway between the two monastic sites at Whitby and Durham – the small village became home to a priory, presumably offering an overnight stay to monks making the trek between the two sites. 800 years after its founding, in 1801, it had reached the staggering population of just 25 people. Nobody would have ever heard of it for most of English history. However, that isn’t to say it was not involved in the wider story arc of England – and its northerly Scottish neighbours. Because it very much was – and this leads us to the origin of that lion. It is, in heraldry speak, a lion rampant (which simply means it is stood up). Taken, in this instance, from the family crest of the Brus family. Originally French (Norman), they came over with William the Conqueror in 1066. Following William’s defeat of Harold Godwinson, King of the Saxons, with the famous arrow in the eye, he set about parcelling up England and giving bits of it to his Norman mates. The Brus (or Brix, in French) were one of them. New English real estate in the North opened up a few years after the Battle of Hastings as William set about solving the ‘problem’ of Northern England being so difficult to manage – by butchering them all. This genocide became known as the Harrying of the North – all the Saxons (or often Vikings, that far north) were removed from their lands and the Norman nobles came in. The Brus were given the lands in and around modern-day Middlesbrough and a red lion rampant was the family crest – and therefore became associated with the region. If Brus sounds a touch familiar, it is because the family didn’t stop in the North East of England but moved up into Scotland. Their most famous son became Robert the Bruce, the King of Scotland who famously led the Scots to victory over the English at the Battle of Bannockburn and secured Scotland’s independence, cementing his place as one of the most important figures in British history. His state at Stirling today looks down on that battlefield - and you can see his coat of arms on the statue base. So, when people say ‘isn’t the Middlesbrough badge just the Scottish badge? … well, it sort of is… although the Scottish badge came first – it was already the Scottish crown’s symbol before the Bruce family took control – and the Bruce family adopted the symbol as their own – which in turn meant it also applied to its lands in the North East. Which is why – nearly a millennia later – Middlesbrough FC fly the Brus family crest today every time they take the field. However, we haven’t even really got to the main part of the story yet – Middlesbrough, as it currently stands, only exists because of coal. And rail. Specifically, a very famous railway. Back in 1801, Middlesbrough was little more than a farmstead and a handful of cottages. Twenty-five people. That was it. Not twenty-five thousand. Twenty-five. The problem – or opportunity, depending on your perspective – was that County Durham was sitting on vast coal reserves. Coal was becoming the black gold of the Industrial Revolution and somebody needed to get it from the mines to the ships that would carry it around Britain and beyond. Enter a Quaker businessman named Joseph Pease. Pease was a banker, mine owner and, crucially, one of the driving forces behind the Stockton and Darlington Railway – the world's first public railway to use steam locomotives. In 1828, he sailed up the River Tees looking for somewhere to build new coal-loading facilities connected to the railway. What he found was Middlesbrough. Or rather, the place that would become Middlesbrough. Pease and a group of fellow investors bought more than 500 acres of land and set about creating an entirely new settlement. Coal staithes were built on the riverbank, houses were constructed for workers, and a branch line linked the new port directly to the Stockton and Darlington Railway. It wasn't a medieval market town that slowly grew over centuries. It wasn't a Roman settlement. It wasn't an ancient port. It was a Victorian business venture. And it worked. Spectacularly. Within a few years the tiny village was handling so much traffic that new docks had to be built. The railway brought coal to the river. The river carried coal to the world. Money flowed back the other way. The transformation was astonishing. Middlesbrough's population exploded from around 40 people in 1829 to over 7,000 by 1851. It became known as the "Infant Hercules" because it seemed to have sprung from nowhere and immediately started throwing its weight around. And if all this railway talk sounds familiar, that's because Middlesbrough's neighbours at Darlington F.C. still proudly display a steam locomotive on their badge today (and a quaker hat - in honour of the local quakers, like Pease, who funded the whole thing) - it is Locomotion No. 1, the famous steam locomotive designed by George Stephenson and built by Robert Stephenson which first ran the Darlington-Stockton railway. So important was Joseph Pease to the story that Middlesbrough erected a statue in his honour. It still stands today, watching over the town that he quite literally helped build from scratch. But Middlesbrough's growth was only just beginning. Because if coal and rail created the town, iron turned it into a giant. Y In 1841, Henry Bolckow and John Vaughan established ironworks on Teesside. Then, in 1850, rich seams of ironstone were discovered in the nearby Eston Hills. Suddenly Middlesbrough had everything it needed: coal for fuel, ironstone for smelting, a railway network to move materials and a port to export the finished products. The result was extraordinary. Pig iron production surged. Blast furnaces multiplied. Smoke stacks dominated the skyline. By the 1870s Middlesbrough was producing roughly a third of Britain's pig iron output and had earned itself a new nickname: Ironopolis. The Iron-Smelling Centre of the World. Well... technically "Iron-Smelting". Although I suspect "Iron-Smelling" was also accurate if the wind was blowing in your direction. This was no longer the sleepy priory village that had spent centuries sitting quietly between Whitby and Durham. This was one of the beating industrial hearts of the British Empire. The iron and steel of Middlesbrough helped build cities across the globe. By 1900, the population had reached around 90,000 people. The town had received its Royal Charter, gained its own Member of Parliament and become one of the most important industrial centres in Britain. Yet Middlesbrough's connection with the wider world didn't begin with iron, steel or even railways. Because before Teesside was exporting pig iron, it was exporting explorers. Just a few miles away, in the village of Great Ayton, a young farmer's son named James Cook was growing up. Before he became Captain Cook, before Australia, before New Zealand, before Hawaii, Cook spent his formative years working on Whitby collier ships carrying coal from the North East down to London. These weren't glamorous vessels. They were workhorses. Floating coal wagons. But they were sturdy, reliable and capable of handling the rough waters of the North Sea. More importantly, they taught Cook navigation, seamanship and chart-making. In many ways, the skills that allowed him to map huge parts of the Pacific Ocean were learned while hauling coal from the same coastline that helped create Middlesbrough itself. Without coal, there is probably no Captain Cook. Cook became one of the most important explorers in human history, charting vast stretches of the Pacific and helping to transform European understanding of the world. His connection to the area remains so strong that the star, or estoile, associated with him was later incorporated into Middlesbrough's coat of arms. Not bad for a lad who started out sailing on coal boats. So there we have it - so far - Rails. Bridges. Ships. Factories. Machinery. Explorers. And their club has proudly represented its heritage. In footballing terms, Middlesbrough have spent most of their history bouncing between the top two divisions, but their greatest achievements include winning the Football League Cup in 2004, reaching the final of the UEFA Cup Final two years later, and twice finishing as runners-up in the old First Division before the Premier League era. They've also produced a remarkable number of England internationals and, despite never winning the league title, remain one of the most successful clubs never to have been crowned champions of England. They've had some great players over the years: including Juninho Paulista, Mark Viduka, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Gaizka Mendieta, Stewart Downing and club captain Gareth Southgate, who helped deliver the most successful era in Middlesbrough's history. It is quite the story. Much of that story was told at Ayresome Park. Opened in 1903, Ayresome became one of English football's great traditional grounds. It hosted matches during the 1966 World Cup and witnessed some of the finest moments in the club's history. Generations of Middlesbrough supporters passed through its turnstiles before the club finally said goodbye in 1995. That year Middlesbrough moved to the Riverside Stadium. Fittingly, the club moved back towards the river that had created the town in the first place. The Riverside was one of the first new generation stadiums built following the Taylor Report and represented a new chapter for both club and town. Yet Middlesbrough ensured that part of Ayresome Park came with them. The famous Ayresome Gates were relocated to the Riverside and still stand there today, linking the club's past to its present. Which brings us back to the badge. Because while the lion reminds us of Norman knights, medieval lordships and the family of Robert the Bruce, the very existence of Middlesbrough Football Club owes far more to Joseph Pease, the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the coalfields of Durham and the furnaces of Ironopolis. The town itself tells the story of how modern Britain was built. Quite the team.

Nestled between the redwood forests and large vineyards of Northern California’s wine country sits an ice rink named for, and built by, Charles M. Schulz – the creator of a little cartoon known as Snoopy. Snoopy’s Home Ice houses Santa Rosa’s semi-professional Santa Rosa Growlers. Their badge tells a tale of the local area – a part of the state of California that has still retained much of its natural beauty and wildlife. As such, they can help us tell another part of the California story, a part that links into the pre-European world and helps create the foundations for what was to come. So, without further ado, let’s #GetTheBadgeIn for the Santa Rosa Growlers. Let’s begin with the bear. The California grizzly bear was the most famous resident of this part of the world (and appears on the California state flag as a result). The California grizzly bear once roamed throughout Sonoma County and much of the state, becoming such an important part of California's identity that it was placed at the centre of the state flag following the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt (when locals raised a bear flag and declared independence – two weeks later the US Army moved in and claimed the territory for the United States). Although the grizzly was driven to extinction in California by the early twentieth century, it remains a powerful symbol of strength, independence, resilience and frontier spirit. Today, black bears still roam (and are increasing in number) around Northern California in and around the nature reserves not too far from Santa Rosa. The bear also connects the area to its pre-European history. The local Pomo peoples held bears in high regard. They were famous for a tradition of having ‘Bear Doctors’ – powerful spiritual leaders believed to possess special connections with bears and bear spirits. According to Pomo traditions recorded by anthropologists, Bear Doctors would wear bearskins, imitate the movements and sounds of bears, and perform ceremonies believed to harness a bear's strength and supernatural power. Some accounts suggest they acted as healers, while others describe them as feared figures capable of using spiritual power for protection or vengeance. So that’s the bear. What of the redwoods that you can also see on the team’s badge? The area was (and in large parts still is) covered in large trees called ‘coast redwoods’ – they are the tallest living organisms on Earth. They can reach 370 feet in height and live for over 2,000 years. Regrettably, during the nineteenth century much of these forests were felled by loggers looking for materials to help build the newly expanding cities of California. If you look more closely at the badge, however, you will see one last feature – the traditional wine bottle right in the centre (at least... I think that’s what it is? If anyone from the club or region is reading this, please let me know...). If it is, it is a direct reference to Santa Rosa's location in the heart of California Wine Country. Sonoma County is one of the most celebrated wine-producing regions in the United States, with a history of commercial winemaking stretching back to the nineteenth century, when settlers established the first vineyards in the region. The fertile valleys, Mediterranean climate and generations of winemakers have helped establish Sonoma as a globally respected centre for viticulture, attracting millions of visitors each year. Even today, the town’s main tourism website markets itself as being in the middle of ‘Wine Country’, and there are dozens of hotels and homes where you can stay as part of wine-tasting experiences or nature getaways from the larger cities to the south. So there you have it. Grizzly bears in tune with local spirit guides, the tallest forests in the world and some of the world’s finest wine – oh – and Snoopy. What more could a team want to carry onto the rink every weekend? Love it.

I came across the club via a social media post claiming faux outrage over an "ice cream" inspired away shirt. What I discovered is a community and volunteer-run club that is doing extraordinary things in the very heart of one of the USA's greatest cities. And one I have instantly fallen in love with. They claim to be the oldest community-run club in America and I'm simply going to quote, at length, their mission statement from their website - because it is genuinely inspiring (and when it comes to stuff like this I am probably the most cynical person on the planet). It goes like this: "San Francisco City FC was founded on the principle that a local sports team should be an organisation ingrained in and reflective of the San Francisco community, rather than a business used for the profit of a select few. This means allowing fans to have control over how the club is operated and using sports as a vehicle to improve our city. The SF City FC Members Organisation pledges to do this through charity events, volunteer hours, free youth soccer programs, fundraising, and democratically representing our members’ interests. Our goal is to grow in San Francisco and have both men’s and women’s professional teams, as well as free youth teams at every age level." I love this. This is 100% what football should be about - inspiring the local community to come together and better itself. Formed in 2001, the club today competes in USL2 - technically the fourth tier (?) of US football - it is a huge tier of 150 semi-professional clubs across the USA. But the newly elected mayor of SF has just turfed SFCFC out of their beautiful little stadium in the city's main park - to make way for his own (and his financial backer's) per project - a MLS 2 team (They've called it MLS Next Pro - which is a terrible name). Which is a chronic shame. Because there is little more SF than this team. Taking inspiration from the German giants that have remained globally competitive while retaining fan control, they run the 50+1 ownership structure where fans will always own a majority stake in the club, with larger private investors welcome on board - but never overriding the fans. That community feel comes through on their website and socials - in between offering free football classes (they call it "soccer" for some odd reason) they also put out warnings about ICE agents, Trump's Gestapo, being spotted in certain areas and warning locals to avoid their cruel, draconian and usually illegal brand of vigilante/racist justice. Well done, that club. In addition their mascot is called Foggy (after the famous fog that rolls in off the Pacific and funnels through the Golden Gate). And their long term sponsor is the San Francisco Municipal Railway. All very wholesome. So, enough of the praise. Let's get to the history behind the badge here - and the ice cream shirt... (which I am about to order...) Sutro Tower They have had a recent redesign which has stripped away the icon showing the famous Golden Gate Bridge and focused instead on the other icon on the badge - the Sutro Tower. This three-legged, three-pronged, trident-looking thing sits atop a hill to the west of the city - allowing it to broadcast over the hilly terrain in that region and down into the city itself. For a long time it was the highest structure in the city - a landmark visible for miles around. It was built on the former property of the Sutro family, which owned a mansion overlooking the city. Adolph Sutro The Sutros themselves are worth a mention - their fortune began in the mid-1800s with Adolph Sutro, who had moved to San Francisco from Germany. He had a shop selling cigars and was struggling to pay rent when suddenly silver was discovered in the Comstock Lode - mountains about 2-3 days' carriage ride away in Nevada. Sutro Tunnel Plan Adolph packed his stock and moved out there - hoping to sell cigars to the miners. On arrival, however, he quickly learned of the problems the miners were having with underground flooding. Sutro saw a solution. He was going to dig a six-mile drainage tunnel. Sutro Tunnel He was able to muster up the financing by selling stock certificates in a new "Sutro Tunnel Company". The tunnel itself was then able to sell its services to individual mining companies who could connect to it, drain their mines, and reap the rewards. It could drain four million gallons of water a day and companies paid an average of $10,000 a day to use it. Sutro Baths Sutro became one of the wealthiest men in the West. He doubled that money and then some by ploughing the gains into San Francisco property and land - which also became a boom commodity. With the riches, he invested heavily in the city, building the Sutro Baths - at the time the world's largest indoor swimming complex. His legacy can be seen today in the Sutro district - and in the name of one of SF's most iconic landmarks. The radio tower itself was instrumental in bringing clear AM, FM and then TV broadcasting to the city. Owned by a consortium of broadcasters, it is operated on a non-profit basis to enable multiple companies to use it. America ushered in the mass-entertainment TV age - and while we all remember the Hollywood studios and superstars, it was a work team lugging large pylons up San Francisco's biggest hill that really allowed the format to thrive. So that's the badge. What of the 2025-26 shirt that led me down this little rabbit hole in the first place? Well, that is a homage to one of the city's most famous culinary exports... and it is also the most American thing you can imagine - the ice cream sandwich. In 1928, a man by the name of George Whitney placed a scoop of creamy vanilla ice cream between two freshly baked old-fashioned oatmeal cookies, and then dipped the sandwich into dark chocolate. It caught on almost immediately, with early adopters claiming "This is it!" - and Whitney adopted the phrase, and so was born the famous "IT'S-IT" Ice Cream Sandwich. Playland-at-the-Beach It was sold for almost four decades exclusively inside San Francisco’s legendary Playland-at-the-Beach amusement park. The park boasted rides, games, shows and other attractions - and the IT'S-IT ice cream provided the fuel for generations of Californians to make the most of the rides (it also gives flashbacks to that amazing video game Theme Park - where if you put the ice cream shop before the roller coaster everyone threw up their ice cream cones after getting off the ride. Side note: the man behind this innovation was a kid called Demis Hassabis, who now runs Google DeepMind and has a Nobel Prize). IT'S-IT ice cream sandwich When Playland was demolished in the early 1970s, IT’S-IT sandwiches began being individually handmade in a small shop in San Francisco’s SOMA district under new ownership. The hunger for IT’S-IT exploded. In order to quench San Francisco’s craving for the ice cream treat, the company relocated to a larger facility in 1976 and today they export pre-packaged versions across the USA. So there you have it. San Francisco City FC. A fantastic community club. Paying homage to iconic television broadcasting infrastructure, cigar-selling silver mine-draining philanthropists - and quite possibly the most inelegant, yet somehow superbly authentic, San Francisco desserts of all time. One of my new favourite clubs. Uppa City.

I went to university in Essex and have been fortunate enough (…) to have spent my formative years surrounded by Hammers fans. So it has been with some delight that I’ve been reminding them of the cost to the taxpayer that their recent relegation has cost us (they have an incredibly generous rental agreement with the local council on the Olympic Stadium, which means that upon relegation their rent goes down by roughly £2.5 million a year! – agreed to by Boris Johnson – so another amazing legacy of his…) Alas. The East End has produced plenty of things over the years. Sailors. Dockers. Market traders. Gangsters. Politicians. The odd world champion boxer. And, of course, West Ham United. The Hammers. The Irons. And a bunch of really loud University of Essex fans during the 2003 play-off semi-finals. Not that I’m still bitter. The club's badge is one of the most recognisable in English football. Two giant crossed hammers. Claret and blue. Job done. Some sort of factory thing. Won’t take long to explain it. Or so I thought. Because tucked away within the modern badge is something I bet most fans don’t even know – the shape of the shield itself ties the club to both its own past and Britain’s past as the heart of a mighty maritime empire. The shield isn’t actually a shield. It is the cross-section of a ship's hull. Not just any ship either. HMS Warrior. The same ship you can still visit today at the Portsmouth Dock Yards. Now we're talking. Maritime history. Much more my thing. To understand why they have the Royal Navy’s first ironclad stitched to their shirts, we need to head back to the old Docklands. The industrial East End. A world of cranes, foundries, shipyards and men whose jobs involved hitting things with hammers for twelve hours a day. Swearing. Gambling. Making rude jokes about their wives. Proper London. In the nineteenth century, the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company was the biggest shipbuilder on the River Thames. At its peak it employed thousands of workers and occupied huge sites around Bow Creek and Canning Town. Among its many achievements was the construction of HMS Warrior. When Warrior was launched in 1860, it changed naval warfare forever. Before Warrior, most warships were made from wood. Warrior was made from iron. Before Warrior, warships relied primarily on sail. Warrior had steam engines. Before Warrior, the Royal Navy ruled the waves through centuries of tradition and the massed (and masted) ranks of disciplined crews still basking in Nelson’s glory. Dreaming of a day when they’d be ordered to Engage the Enemy More Closely and board French ships, slipping on bloody decks and swinging across the rigging. But Warrior announced that the future had arrived. Warfare was no longer about coming alongside your enemy and blasting them to pieces, hoping your gun crews were more disciplined than their opponents – that they could fire faster despite being deafened by their own cannons, pulverised by incoming cannonballs and sliced to pieces by razor-sharp fragments of decking and hull zipping through the air. Remember, one lad's job was simply to keep the sawdust fresh on the floor to soak up the blood. Warrior was the beginning of a new world – one that would quickly lead to explosive shells, radio, radar and cold hard steel – and the Royal Navy was once again at the forefront of it. And the men who built her? Many of them worked for the same company that would eventually give birth to West Ham United. The club began life in 1895 as Thames Ironworks F.C. It was founded by shipbuilders, boilermakers, riveters, engineers and labourers who were among the most skilled craftsmen and technicians on Earth. The crossed hammers on the badge represent the riveting hammers used by those workers. That is where the nicknames "The Hammers" and "The Irons" come from. Which brings us back to the badge. When West Ham redesigned it ahead of their move to the London Stadium, they removed the castle (which referred to Boleyn Castle – a local landmark near their old ground, the Boleyn Ground) but retained the hammers and adopted the hull-shaped shield as a tribute to HMS Warrior and the Thames Ironworks that built her. But that is only part of the story. Firstly, let’s visit this thing about blowing bubbles. I recently visited the London Stadium and was amused at the bubble machines they wheeled out before the match and seeing the whole crowd singing in unison about bubbles – not exactly the most fearsome of war-cries, and somehow lacking the poignancy of Liverpool’s You’ll Never Walk Alone. So where does it come from? I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles originated as a popular song from the 1918 Broadway musical The Passing Show. It became widely known in Britain through the working-class music halls of London during the 1920s, which picked up the tune and made it popular on this side of the Atlantic. I had always assumed American music was a relatively recent import to Britain, but this proves that working-class Londoners could be humming American hits over a century ago. These music halls were lively venues offering affordable entertainment, where ordinary Londoners enjoyed songs, comedy and variety acts. They were a huge part of urban working-class culture, only really disappearing with the rise of cinema and later television. The last real connection my generation has to that world is probably Bruce Forsyth, who cut his teeth on the remnants of the music-hall circuit in the 1940s and 1950s. The song became linked to West Ham through a local schoolboy nicknamed "Bubbles", whose headmaster would sing it whenever the school team played well. The headmaster happened to be a friend of West Ham manager Charlie Paynter, and the song gradually made its way onto the terraces at Upton Park. In 1999, Hammers supporters set a world record when all 24,000 fans in attendance blew bubbles continuously for one minute. A record nobody has bothered trying to beat (weird...) But still, well done them. So that’s the badge and its shipbuilding past. That’s the song and its music-hall origins. Are we done? Not quite. Because we owe it to history to visit one final character: Arnold Hills. Hills belonged to that old class of Brit – the sort who went to Harrow (like Hills), then Oxford (like Hills), and somehow ended up running vast industrial enterprises while representing England at sport and discovering a lost civilisation before breakfast. Hills himself didn’t quite manage all of that, but nineteenth-century Britain seemed remarkably good at producing wildly talented, outrageously privileged people. Hills was an athlete who represented England at football and won national athletics titles. He was also, of course, the managing director of the Thames Iron Works in Canning Town. Imagine Wayne Rooney simultaneously running one of Europe’s largest manufacturing firms. Unlike many Victorian industrialists, however, Hills took a keen interest in the welfare of his workers. He lived for five years in a small workers' home in Canning Town and ensured the company provided recreational facilities to improve workers’ lives. It was this belief in organised sport as a force for discipline, health and community that led him, alongside foreman Dave Taylor, to found Thames Ironworks F.C. in 1895 – the club that would eventually become West Ham United. Hills provided the financial backing that allowed the club to grow, helping transform a works team into a community institution. Yet he was also a fascinatingly unconventional figure: a committed vegetarian, temperance campaigner and philanthropist. He established the London Vegetarian Society and appointed a young man called Mahatma Gandhi to its board (in the society's first photo you can see him sat on the front row - when he had hair). He set up the Vegetarian Cycling Club, founded a newspaper called The Vegetarian, and helped create the Oriolet Fruitarian Hospital – Britain's first hospital dedicated to treating vegetarians and healing use the power of fruit... …What utter woke nonsense is this!? How many of West Ham’s die-hard supporters, proudly flashing crossed-hammers symbols, know that they owe their existence to a lily-livered vegetarian? I absolutely love it. It makes Dale Vince’s Forest Green Rovers look like gas-guzzling MAGA voters. Superb stuff from the Hammers. I’ll be looking forward to their Arnold Hills anniversary vegan-inspired third shirt. Come on, Hammers. Let’s make this happen. There is almost nothing more British than West Ham. The grit, sweat and clanging steel of the shipyards that helped build and defend an empire, workers who spent weekends singing American songs and getting drunk, all funded by an upper-class eccentric who represented England in sport and promoted a hippy lifestyle. I say again – I absolutely love this club. Up the East End Vegetarians!

Sassuolo – or Unione Sportiva Sassuolo Calcio, to be precise – has recently fallen onto my radar because, a) last season they won promotion back to Serie A and, despite the odds, have managed to survive another year (as an Ipswich fan, clubs that can make this jump hold a certain fascination for me), and b) it was also where Muric, Town's former goalkeeper, spent last season on loan and has just today announced he will be joining on a permanent deal. So... who exactly are Sassuolo? And what can their badge reveal about their origins? Well, they use the classic footballing "Barcelona-style" badge, which is actually quite common around the footballing world as a way of paying homage to the Catalan giants. (Forest Green Rovers in England used a very similar design before their rebrand.) They are the only Serie A team not to represent a provincial capital, with the town itself having only around 40,000 people. Their stadium is actually too small to meet modern Serie A standards, so what was once their home ground is now their training ground. Instead, they share a stadium with Serie B side AC Reggiana, around 20 kilometres away. The stadium, however, has been purchased by Sassuolo's owner – the chemical giant Mapei. Mapei made its fortune from glue. Not the sort you used at primary school, but specialist commercial adhesives that stick everything from lino to kitchen floors, tiles to walls and even Olympic running tracks to the ground. Their products have been used to help repair the Panama Canal, restore the Sistine Chapel and refloor parts of the Kremlin in Moscow. Apparently the reviews say it made putting the floors down quite easy... The company remains owned by the founding Squinzi family, who are renowned for their philanthropy and investment in Italian sport, particularly cycling. So that's the team. What of the badge? The black and green colours make Sassuolo stand out amongst Italian clubs, most of whom seem to favour red, blue, white, or some combination of the three. The club originally played in the colours of the town's coat of arms – yellow and red – but switched to black and green in 1971 for reasons that remain somewhat unclear. One theory (although supposedly debunked) is that an English side called Lancaster Rovers was touring Italy and, after cancelling the remainder of its trip, donated its kits to Sassuolo as an apology. Sassuolo itself features the same symbol on its coat of arms that appears in the upper-left quadrant of the football club's crest: three rocks with two flowers growing from them. This is thought to be a visual pun, something common in heraldry. Sassuolo sounds similar to saxum solum ("rocky soil"), one proposed origin of the town's name. The town's Latin motto translates as "From the rocks, buds" – which is a rather lovely message and metaphor. Especially for a football club that spent most of its existence in Italy's lower leagues before finally flowering into a respectable Serie A side. The town itself sits in the foothills of the Modena region. Its thick clay proved ideal for ceramics and, even today, factories across the area churn out vast quantities of tiles. Around 80% of Italian ceramic tile production comes from the Sassuolo district. It is also famous for its own anise-flavoured liqueur, Sassolino (think Sambuca), first developed by Swiss migrants who settled in the town. St anding in the town centre is the Palazzo Ducale, one of northern Italy's finest Baroque buildings. Originally a fortress, it was transformed into a grand ducal residence in 1634 by Duke Francesco I d'Este. He commissioned leading architects and artists, including Bartolomeo Avanzini and Gaspare Vigarani, and the interior is lavishly decorated with paintings and murals from floor to ceiling. The palace is surrounded by extensive gardens that have been compared to a miniature Versailles, complete with fountains and hunting grounds that once stretched for more than 12 kilometres. Within the grounds is a now ruined 'Peschiera' which apparently was a half theatre-half aquraium (I'm thinking a mediaeval dolphin show...?). So there you have it. Sassuolo. From glue to ceramics, cycling to liqueur, and industry to Baroque elegance. A great deal has flourished in that rocky soil, and this little Italian town with a big heart now has a football club determined to hold its own amongst the giants of Italian football.

One of the best games of football I've ever seen featured Hereford United (the precursor to today's Hereford FC). It was a cold, dark February evening in 2012 and I was at Priestfield in Gillingham. The score finished 5–4, with the Gills coming out on top, but at the 80-minute mark Hereford led 3–2. The next ten minutes, plus stoppage time, were absolute carnage. Unfortunately for United, their luck didn't improve much in the years that followed. Just two years later, they had suffered relegation and insolvency. Fans took it upon themselves to form a phoenix club and, unable to use the exact name of the club that had just vanished, settled on "Hereford FC" with the tagline "Forever United" on their badge. Nicely done, lads. They respawned (to use video game parlance my son would understand) in the Midland Football League, the ninth tier of English football. In the years since, they have battled their way back up, with three consecutive promotions to kick things off, dominating teams with their comparatively huge fanbase for that level. Today they sit in National League North, just within reach of the EFL and restoring their natural position of bobbling around the fourth and fifth tiers of the game. I love seeing these phoenix clubs do well and am currently Googling Hereford kits as we speak to add to my collection. Known as "The Whites" for their home colours, they do look smart when they take to the pitch. However, it is their other nickname, "The Bulls", which grabs your attention first for very obvious reasons. Their badge features a giant bull. From Hereford. The Hereford bull. A selectively bred weapon of economic warfare brought to us by the good people of Herefordshire. Emerging from the county's cattle farms in the mid-1700s, the Hereford would become famous – and vital – to a growing and industrialising nation. The Hereford, with its distinctive white face and red body, is a cattle farmer's dream: hardy, able to survive extremes of temperature, and capable of producing beautifully marbled meat from relatively poor forage. To boot, they tend to have excellent temperaments and are easy to handle. Farmers in and around Hereford could suddenly boost their profits by switching breeds or introducing Herefords to turn empty or exhausted fields into additional revenue. The breed caught on and soon spread globally, but it was in the hills of Herefordshire that the secret was first discovered and refined. Legend has it that the process began with local farmer Benjamin Tomkins and two cows, Pidgeon and Mottle, inherited from his father. This British invention would go on to transform the American West after the Civil War. Herds of longhorns were being driven north from Mexico and, while they were believed to be the best cattle for long-distance ranching, they were no match for the Hereford. The breed proved the equal of the longhorn in terms of endurance while also producing better-quality meat, and farmers across the United States switched. Winning farmers' fair after farmers' fair, the breed quickly won admirers, and the Hereford helped fuel an agricultural revolution in America much as it had done in Britain. An online article from a Montana based agricultural paper calls them the 'Breed the Built the West'. So there you have it. From the stews served in cowboy towns to fine dining tables in Manhattan, and from tinned beef rations during the First World War to modern supermarkets, the Hereford was there. Not bad for a city of 50,000 people nestled amongst the picturesque rolling hills near the Welsh border. Hereford, the city, has a much longer history. First granted city status by Richard I in 1189 (when it was described as being in Wales), the city boasts some beautiful medieval architecture, including the cathedral which houses the ancient Mappa Mundi. The Mappa Mundi is the world's largest surviving medieval map, created around 1300 and displayed in Hereford Cathedral. Rather than serving as a navigational tool, it presents a religious view of the world, combining Biblical stories, classical myths, animals, monsters and medieval beliefs to teach visitors about Christian faith, morality and salvation. It does contain some rather unsavoury imagery. For example, it is not very kind to Jews, showing a horned Moses and a depiction of Jews worshipping the Golden Calf in the form of a Saracen devil. The map also portrays women as inherently sinful, including the wife of Lot being turned into a pillar of salt for gazing back at the city of Sodom. But I suppose these days anything that didn't do this would be called woke, wouldn't it? Before we wrap up this little investigation into Hereford FC there is one more aspect about Hereford's place in the British imagination that we need to mention. Sitting just outside the city is a little military base known as Stirling Lines. There you will find the headquarters of a little British army regiment known as the Special Air Service. The SAS. Britain's world famous elite fighting unit that has been at the cutting edge of every conflict from the Second World War onwards. The base took the name 'Stirling' in honour of David Stirling, the founder of the regiment. When the British were fighting the Italians and Germans in North Africa it was Stirling, and some like minded courage/crazy eccentrics that founded the Long Range Desert Group. They would drive out into the desert for days at a time and remerge at night behind enemy lines and conduct raids on supply lines and depots. This unit was so successful that it became a regiment in its own right - and in the 1960s it moved to Hereford. The rolling countryside is perfect for military training while the city is still close enough to the major urban hubs that the regiment can get most places pretty quickly if called upon. So there you have it. Hereford. Medieval city. Keeper of maps. Fuelled the Industrial Revolution. Home to the most famed special forces regiment in the world - and more importantly - a newly resurgent football club trying to find its way back to the EFL.

Siena FC SSD was formed in 1904, when the club was founded in Siena as Società Studio e Divertimento (“Society for Study and Entertainment”) by a group that broke away from an existing sporting club. Eventually, they would evolve into Associazione Calcio Siena (“Siena Football Association”). Siena is a relatively small city but with a very long history. Their football team, perhaps initially stifled by its smaller recruitment pool compared to its larger rivals, spent much of its history in the lower divisions. However, they undertook a remarkable rise during the late 1990s and early 2000s, winning the Serie B title in 2002–03 and earning promotion to Serie A for the first time. They spent nine seasons competing against the giants of Italian football, clubs like Juventus F.C., A.C. Milan and Inter Milan. However, trying to keep up with them was difficult, and financial problems and bankruptcy hit the club multiple times, leading to rebirths under new ownership. Today, Siena still retains passionate local support but currently plays in Serie D, the fourth tier of Italian football. A team like Siena, then, reflects its city in more ways than one, because the city too had an incredible past and achieved amazing things, especially during the early Renaissance period. Siena, at its peak, was the rival of Florence — its northern neighbour — in terms of wealth and Renaissance splendour. The club’s black-and-white colours come directly from Siena’s medieval coat of arms and flag, but it is their wolf-and-child icon that requires deeper investigation. Of course, anyone who knows anything about the Romans (or Italian football) will instantly recognise it as the symbol of Romulus and Remus — the mythical founders of Rome. It is most famous these days for being the badge of AS Roma. We all know the story — the two brothers were left in a basket at birth and raised by a wolf. But what, then, is this symbol doing on the football team of a city nearly 250km away? Well, there is a very strong connection: Siena’s own founding myth claims the city was established by Senius and Aschius, sons of Remus and nephews of Romulus, who fled Rome after Remus was killed. According to the legend, they carried with them the statue of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus (pictured), which later became one of Siena’s enduring symbols. The story also claims they arrived on black-and-white horses, supposedly inspiring Siena’s famous black-and-white coat of arms, known as the Balzana. The city was a Roman military outpost for a long while, sitting as it does on the strategically important Via Francigena — the pilgrimage route that ran from Canterbury in England, through France and then down into Italy and finally to Rome. It stretches 3000km in total and, even today, is promoted by the EU as a fantastic walking route for those who really want to get to know Europe (I can only hope that, by the time I retire, I still have the stamina — and funds — for such an adventure!). After the fall of the Roman Empire, Italy initially fell mostly under Church control but then fragmented into various states as local lords, merchants and bankers campaigned for more of a say in affairs — and Siena became such a state. In the 12th century, the Republic of Siena was founded. Siena, blessed with its strategic location and surrounded by fertile lands, quickly became a centre for wheat, salt, wool and wine. This, in turn, led to the emergence of money lenders who could provide capital to those wanting to cash in on this flourishing trade. One such group formed the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which is still going today and is the world’s oldest bank still headquartered in its beautiful building in Siena. Money flowed in and, with it, the ability of locals to offer patronage to the city and the arts. The stunning Siena Cathedral was built in the 12th century (and shares a black-and-white colour palette) and was worked on by some of the great Renaissance architects and artists, including Donatello. Meanwhile, the city centre became dominated by Piazza del Campo — one of the greatest town squares anywhere in Europe. It has hosted the biannual Palio di Siena horse race around the edge of the square since the 17th century. The event today is more of a festival, with parades and officials in full medieval dress, making it an incredible spectacle. The city would host numerous Renaissance artists and its most famous remaining work sits inside the town hall — entitled The Allegory of Good and Bad Government. The frescoes adorn the walls of the room where local officials would make their decisions. It was intended as a constant reminder of their responsibilities and the consequences of their decisions — a fantastic tribute to the ongoing humanist movement that spurred the Renaissance, and a reminder that it was human decisions that affected human affairs. So there we have it: Siena FC SSD. While they may today sit in the fourth tier, they are a perfect package of culture, tradition and commerce, deeply rooted in both the Roman and Renaissance past of Italy. You could hardly find a more perfect package of Italianness. I am sure their football team will rise once again. You can bank on it. Enjoyed discovering the history behind this badge? This story also appears in Wolsey Academy's Renaissance History curriculum, where students explore the people, places, ideas and events that shaped the Renaissance through enquiry-based lessons, projects and historical investigations. Teachers can browse the full collection at www.wolseyacademy.com/shop and receive 50% off any lesson bundle using the exclusive #GetTheBadgeIn code GTBI50.

Società Sportiva Lazio (SS Lazio) is one of the most famous clubs in the world. Founded in 1900, they, as an organisation, compete in over 40 different sports. They are most famous, I think, amongst my generation, who grew up seeing them dominate Italian and European football. In the 90s, they reached the UEFA Cup Final in 1998 before winning the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup and Super Cup in 1999 and then the Serie A title in 2000. Formed by young men in the Prati district of the city – slightly outside the main city centre and traditionally a rural area – the club and region have always had a degree of anti-establishment feeling to them. Prati as a district began to be built up after Italy’s unification in 1861. It was meant to house new workers moving in from outside of Rome who were coming to staff the new national government offices being constructed. Its mayor at the time, the London-born (but still very Italian) Ernesto Nathan, butted heads with the Catholic Church during his tenure as Prati was being built up. Nathan wanted to see a more modern, secular (non-religious) Italy, with government services like schools and hospitals taken away from the Church’s control. Needless to say, this didn’t go down well with the Church, and their quarrel lasted for the entire time Nathan was in charge – so much so that, when planning the street system for Prati, he made sure that no street would have a clear view of St Peter’s Basilica (the Vatican/Pope’s house). So it was in this very secular-leaning region – with people who had moved in from many different areas of Italy and perhaps didn’t have that same sense of duty to the Vatican – that they began kicking around a ball and seeking a new identity for themselves and their district. This defiant streak stuck with the club. During Mussolini’s fascist government, they wanted to merge all Rome’s football teams into one larger club so they could compete against the powerhouses of Italian football from the north (like Milan). AS Roma, Lazio’s rival club, was formed as a result. Lazio was pressured to fold and join, but refused. They remained independent. They like to do things their own way. Now, onto the actual identity of the club and the badge. Looking again, in a subtle way, to undercut the Catholic Church, they chose an identity that pre-dated the Christian Church. In the best traditions of the Renaissance itself, they looked back to the classical world – to Ancient Greece and Rome – for their sense of self. Their colours – light blue – were the colours of Greece and the ancient Olympic Games. Their crest? A Roman Imperial Eagle (called the ‘Aquila’) was a regimental standard for each Roman Legion and was used around Imperial Rome (Colchester – the old capital of Roman England – have a Roman Aquila on their badge too). The team’s mascot is a real eagle, called Olimpia, who flies across the stadium before every game. Fittingly, the most famous landmark in the Prati district is not a Catholic monument, but Hadrian’s Mausoleum – the great Roman Emperor who ruled more than 200 years before Christianity became the official religion of Rome. By choosing to hark back to the classical past – perhaps to avoid the more ‘modern’ Catholic symbolism – they were doing the most Italian thing ever. The Renaissance that swept across Italy during the 15th century was built along exactly the same lines – looking back to ancient texts, philosophers and artists to see what could be relearned. This trend was part of a wider movement known as ‘Humanism’, where the emphasis in research and culture became the achievements of man – and not God. This caused tensions at the time too. Most famously, in 1633, the Roman Inquisition (essentially the Catholic thought police) sentenced Galileo Galilei to lifelong house arrest for heresy after he published a book supporting the heliocentric (Sun-centred) model of the universe. Italy has long been a land of contradictions – pride in and adherence to Catholic teachings and the authority of the Pope – but also an undercurrent looking to embrace their older identity as an Empire built on classical, pre-Christian thought. That difference, whilst not always obvious, can be seen in the city of Rome itself. The capital is packed with Renaissance imagery (not all of which upset the Catholic Church – which did well to embrace many parts of the Renaissance, especially those that allowed it to have fancy new buildings and religious-inspired artworks). St. Peter's Basilica became the ultimate symbol of Renaissance ambition, combining Christian belief with the grandeur of Ancient Rome through its enormous dome designed by Michelangelo. Nearby, the Sistine Chapel showcased Renaissance ideas through Michelangelo’s famous ceiling paintings, blending Biblical stories with realistic human anatomy and artistic techniques inspired by classical sculpture. Tempietto, designed by Donato Bramante, also reflected this revival of classical Roman architecture in a deeply religious setting. Secular Renaissance monuments in Rome focused more on wealth, culture and political power. Palazzo Farnese was built as a grand palace for the powerful Farnese family and demonstrated Renaissance ideas of symmetry, proportion and status. Meanwhile, Villa Farnesina celebrated mythology, beauty and learning rather than religion, featuring frescoes by Raphael inspired by stories from Ancient Greece and Rome. So there you have it. Lazio. A team that flies (literally, during home games) the Roman Aquila, that wears the colours of Ancient Greece, and that comes from a region with a long history of defying the authorities and doing its own thing. There is nothing more Italian than that. Enjoyed discovering the history behind this badge? This story also appears in Wolsey Academy's Renaissance History curriculum, where students explore the people, places, ideas and events that shaped the Renaissance through enquiry-based lessons, projects and historical investigations. Teachers can browse the full collection at www.wolseyacademy.com/shop and receive 50% off any lesson bundle using the exclusive #GetTheBadgeIn code GTBI50.

Carrarese – meaning from or of the Italian town of Carrara. Calcio meaning football/soccer. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring to you one of my new favourite teams. The Marbles of Italy’s Serie B. Carrara is on the Italian west coast, tucked up near the top end. Upper thigh – if Italy really does resemble a leg booting a football. It is a small town of monumental significance to Italian history. Why? Because it provided all their marble. From Ancient Rome to Renaissance Florence, the whole place, for more than 2,000 years, has been clad in Carrara marble. Let’s go even further back, something like 200 million years. Give or take a week or so. The region was once a great tropical sea – tiny sea creatures, coral and shells settled at the bottom of the seabed. Over the millennia, they were crushed down into layers of sedimentary rock – limestone, to be precise. Later, the African plate moved north and pushed into Europe, forcing this limestone first deeper underground where, under extreme pressure and heat, the limestone recrystallised into marble. Then, fortunately, the African plates continued pushing and eventually ‘crumpled’, for want of a better term, the land upwards – forming the Alps mountain range and pushing this precious marble closer to the surface and above it. And then along comes man. Digging around in the dirt, they realise this stuff is a) really good looking and b) really strong and durable… we could make some money out of this. So the town is perfectly placed, close to the sea so the heavy marble can be carted down to ships which can then head along the coast to supply the growing Italian cities of the Roman Empire, but also close enough to the foothills of the Apuan Alps that it can dig down (or in some cases up) to get to the marvellous marble. Carrara marble is famous for its high quality – white or blue-grey in colour and perfect for building and sculpting (and last season's away kit paid homage to it - see below). A little bit like the Spice in Dune then, but not quite so much. He who controlled the marble controlled the… palaces. The Romans perfected the industry, with hundreds of quarries being opened in the region and heavy-duty carts being built to facilitate the movement of the freshly cut stone. And this, ladies and gentlemen, brings us to the fascinating crest of Carrarese Calcio 1908 and allows us to finally #GetTheBadgeIn. See, the motto of the town is "Fortitudo mea in rota" ("My strength is in the wheel") and the town coat of arms carries… a wheel. The sort of strong wheel needed to bring the marble down from the mountain to the waiting ships. And this is why I love it so much. Simple, effective, deeply rooted in the local history and culture… I love that all the beautiful architecture of Imperial Rome and Renaissance Italy began here – in the mountains, in the dust, with the back-breaking work of hacking away at the Alps and carting it down to the coast. This is the real engine room of all those marvels – the men and women behind the scenes, sleeves rolled up, who made it all happen. After the Romans, the region was long ruled together by two Italian noble families who grew rich from the trade. The Malaspina family (which means ‘bad thorn’ – and there are lots of theories as to why) and the Cybo family from nearby Genoa, who supplemented their trading profits from this great port town with the extraction of marble. Together they formed an ‘Office of Marble’ in 1564 – a sort of OPEC for stone. Famous buildings made from the marble include the nearby Basilica of Massa but also, probably of most importance, Michelangelo’s David, which sits in Florence. Michelangelo created David from a piece of marble that had twice been discarded by other sculptors. Agostino di Duccio gave up on a project using the block, after which it sat untouched for 10 years. At that point, Antonio Rossellino took a crack at the block but decided it was too much of a pain to work with. When Michelangelo finally got his hands on it, the marble had been waiting for 40 years for someone who was up to its challenge. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the quarry workers of Carrara added another interesting chapter to their history by embracing political anarchy. According to a New York Times article from 1894, the workers in Carrara’s marble quarries were considered some of the most neglected labourers in Italy. Many were former convicts or men escaping the law, and the work was so brutal and dangerous that quarry owners were willing to employ almost anyone strong enough to endure it, regardless of their past. Over time, the quarry workers and stone carvers developed a reputation for radical political beliefs. Anarchism became deeply connected to Carrara’s identity, especially after revolutionaries expelled from Belgium and Switzerland arrived in 1885 and established Italy’s first anarchist group there. The quarry district soon gained a reputation as the birthplace of Italian anarchism. One local anarchist, Galileo Palla, famously claimed that in Carrara “even the stones are anarchists.” In 1894, the marble workers took to the streets in protest – and armed themselves for a fight. 40,000 government soldiers had to be sent to put down the “Lunigiana revolt”. The workers blocked the roads into the town with huge blocks of marble - a gesture I absolutely love. However, I, for one, would not have wished to have been one of those sent to confront these angry quarry workers with their tools, weapons, sketchy backgrounds and pointy slabs of marble. This is why I love this badge and this story. The most beautiful and elegant pieces of art and architecture in all of man’s history began here – dug out by the hands of hardy men doing a hardy job and receiving little acknowledgement for their efforts. Carrarese Calcio 1908 - playing today at Stadio dei Marmi (Stadium of the Marbles) - carry an incredible heritage with them on to the pitch. Carrara’s strength really is in the wheel. Enjoyed discovering the history behind this badge? This story also appears in Wolsey Academy's Renaissance History curriculum, where students explore the people, places, ideas and events that shaped the Renaissance through enquiry-based lessons, projects and historical investigations. Teachers can browse the full collection at www.wolseyacademy.com/shop and receive 50% off any lesson bundle using the exclusive #GetTheBadgeIn code GTBI50.

Napoli. Italian champions last season (which is why they can wear the Scudetto (little shield) this season). Their away kit this season is also a remarkable affair. A love letter to their city. I absolutely love kits like this – rooted deep in their home city’s culture and history. So let’s unpack it and see what we can learn. Most of the icons within the pattern refer to pre-Renaissance superstitions and folklore which show what life was like for Medieval Europeans before the Humanists of the Renaissance showed up with their lofty ideals of ‘observing’ for evidence and focusing on logic, ancient texts and the deep study of humanity. Pft. Medieval folklore is where it is at – and this shirt screams it. So, before we begin, let’s set the scene: Naples. A huge natural bay and harbour on the southern Italian coast, facing out to the Mediterranean Sea with the ancient volcano, Mount Vesuvius, sitting behind it – declaring its location to seafarers for miles around. God couldn’t have created a more perfect port. And through the ages everyone has known it. The Romans (they built Pompeii next door – and we all know why that’s famous), the Byzantines fought for it, and the Normans and the Spanish all wanted a piece of the pie. Grain, wine, olives, pottery and cloth from the mainland went out and in came silks, spices for the cities’ growing elite, and iron and timber for its labourers to continue its rise. With the traders came influences and cultures from all across Europe, Africa and the Levant (Middle East) – few places on Earth are as naturally and historically diverse as Naples. So, let’s go icon by icon and see what this shirt can teach us about Naples, Europe and the pre-Renaissance world. The mask of Pulcinella is one of the most recognisable symbols of Naples, rooted in the Commedia dell’arte theatre tradition of the 16th–17th centuries during a time when Naples was under Spanish rule, a period marked by poverty, inequality and strict authority from their foreign rulers. Pulcinella emerged during this time. His character – cunning, cheeky and unpredictable – allowed ordinary people to laugh at power without directly challenging it. With his hunched posture, white costume and black mask, he became a symbol of the city itself. Able to survive hardship through wit, humour and adaptability. The image of the Sacred Heart, often accompanied by the phrase “per grazia ricevuta” (“for a grace received”), reflects the deep Catholic faith of Naples, especially from the early modern period onwards. In a city regularly threatened by volcanic eruptions (and not without reason!), plagues and political instability, people turned to religion to make sense of their world. The Sacred Heart tradition in Naples, however, grew from an ancient Roman pagan custom of leaving votive (an offering or gift given in thanks for a prayer answered) offerings to the gods in return for protection or answered prayers. Over time, Christianity absorbed this practice into the Catholic tradition of the ex-voto, where believers offer symbolic gifts to saints, the Virgin Mary or Christ as thanks for a miracle or favour received. In Naples, this became especially tied to silver heart offerings, often inscribed “per grazia ricevuta” (“for a grace received”), reflecting the city’s emotional and deeply personal style of popular faith. Il Monaciello, meaning “the little monk,” is a mysterious figure from Neapolitan folklore believed to inhabit homes and the underground spaces beneath the city. His origins lie in medieval Naples, where young men wore monk-like cloaks while moving secretly through the city’s tunnels – possibly linked to forbidden relationships or criminal activity. Over time, this evolved into a supernatural legend: a small spirit who could bring either good fortune (leaving money) or mischief (causing disturbances). The story reflects Naples’ unique geography, with its extensive underground network – formed when the locals dug out the soft volcanic rock beneath their own streets to use for building materials. The garlic bulb has long been a symbol of protection in Naples and around medieval Europe, with roots stretching back to ancient Greek and Roman beliefs. Garlic was thought to ward off evil spirits, illness and misfortune, and this belief continued through the Middle Ages into modern times (and there is some scientific evidence now to suggest it does have a moderately positive impact on health!). Hung in homes or carried as a charm, it is a blend of ancient superstition and practical wisdom. The cornetto, a small horn-shaped amulet often seen in bright red, is one of Naples’ most iconic symbols. Its origins date back to ancient Mediterranean fertility symbols and protective charms against the “evil eye”. The curved shape is thought to resemble both animal horns (a sign of strength) and natural forms associated with vitality. Red, the colour of blood and life, enhances its protective meaning. Over centuries, especially in a city marked by uncertainty and hardship, the cornetto became a popular everyday object worn to bring good luck to the wearer or household. San Gennaro is perhaps the most powerful symbol of Naples’ identity. A Christian martyr from the 3rd century, he became the city’s patron saint, believed to protect Naples from disaster – especially eruptions of Mount Vesuvius. The famous miracle of his blood liquefying, observed several times a year, has been recorded since the Middle Ages and continues today. In times of crisis, from plagues to war, Neapolitans have turned to San Gennaro for protection. During the Festival of Saint Januarius in Naples (19th September), crowds gather at the cathedral to witness the supposed miracle of the saint’s dried blood liquefying, which Neapolitans believe brings protection and good fortune to the city. So there we have it. What a shirt. From underground hunchbacks, to rebellious comics to blood-letting Saints - Naples is a complex place. And Napoli does it proud. Enjoyed discovering the history behind this badge? This story also appears in Wolsey Academy's Renaissance History curriculum, where students explore the people, places, ideas and events that shaped the Renaissance through enquiry-based lessons, projects and historical investigations. Teachers can browse the full collection at www.wolseyacademy.com/shop and receive 50% off any lesson bundle using the exclusive #GetTheBadgeIn code GTBI50.

This club takes the award for the most Instagrammable of hometowns. And in Italy, the competition is fierce. The Amalfi Coast is famously beautiful, with dozens of natural harbours and bays, colourful medieval housing running up the cliffs, and the sparkle of the sun off the Mediterranean. Many a model has been photographed with these iconic views in the background – and many a tourist has drunk more than their fair share of the local delicacy, limoncello, made from the area’s famously large and delicious lemons. The club itself is relatively small-scale. Competing in the lower tiers of Italian football, they have recently been bought out by a CEO who made his money digitising and upgrading medical clinics - and you can see his influence immediately, as the brand and products associated with the team have suddenly become far more visible and accessible. As part of this drive has been a conslidation of footballing power along the coast. The current club emerged from the merger of several long-standing local teams from across the Amalfi Coast, including Maiori, Minori, Scala and Amalfi itself. Accordingly, the badge itself was changed to include the red stripe from the wider region's coat of arms - incorporating more than just the town itself. They play just up the road at the Campo Maiori ground, which is itself cut out of a cliff face. Despite Amalfi itself being a tiny town of just over 4,000 people, the wider coastal region is one of the world’s most famous tourist destinations - and the heritage and history, as we will see, are absolutely mind-blowing. Long before tourists arrived clutching their cameras and sun hats, Amalfi was one of the great maritime powers of the Mediterranean. It was known as one of the “Big Four” - Venice, Genoa, Pisa and Amalfi. And the flag it flew? Well, that sits proudly on the team’s badge today: the eight-pointed cross of the Amalfi Republic. Amalfitan merchants brought the cross to Jerusalem in 1048 AD, where they founded the hospital that became the Order of St John. When the Order relocated to the island of Malta in 1530, the symbol became universally known as the Maltese Cross - but its origins lay in Amalfi. From around the 9th to 11th centuries, Amalfi became an independent maritime republic and one of Europe’s great trading hubs. Amalfitan merchants sailed across the Mediterranean exchanging grain, timber and salt for gold dinars from Egypt and Syria, before buying valuable Byzantine silks to sell across Western Europe. At a time when much of medieval Italy still relied on barter, Amalfi’s traders were already using gold coinage and operating something akin to early capitalism. The town grew enormously wealthy and, at its peak, may have held as many as 70,000 people - huge for the period. Its sailors became so respected that Amalfi even produced its own maritime law code, the Tavole Amalfitane, which helped govern trade and shipping across Christian ports for centuries. In many ways they are the precussor to today's UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which governs ships today. The Amalfitine laws stated things such as the need to save crew and cargo before a ship - and the right of a sailor to compensation from the owner if injured on duty. The sort of thing I can imagine today's world labelling as 'woke nonsense' - but was instead adopted and enforced by medieval slave trading ships - because even they could see it was common sense and the decent thing to do. Which says something. The city was also associated with the mariner’s compass, with local tradition claiming that Amalfitan Flavio Gioja (born in next door Positano) helped introduce it to Europe. He is supposed to have perfected the use of a magnet to ensure the needle always pointed North - and for building them inside glass boxes with a compass rose pattern beneath. A statue of him stands today on the Amalfi coastline. From their beautiful home shores, the men and women of Amalfi were having a massively outsized impact - a tradition I suspect the current owners of the football team wish to tap into once more. However, like many an Italian maritime state, Amalfi’s golden age eventually faded. The Norman conquest in 1073 weakened the Republic - and it does make you wonder whether anyone at Hastings ten years earlier felt slightly short-changed when allocated rainy England instead of this picturesque stretch of Mediterranean coastline. Amalfi struggled to recover from Norman intervention and soon its fierce rivals from Pisa repeatedly attacked and sacked the city. Then came disaster. In 1343, a devastating tsunami destroyed much of Amalfi’s harbour and lower town. The once-mighty trading republic never truly recovered, slipping from Mediterranean superpower status to a quiet provincial town nestled amongst the coast’s cliff faces. Traces of that lost power remain everywhere. The enormous cathedral dedicated to Saint Andrew dominates the town centre, holding relics brought back from Constantinople during the Crusades. Nearby stand the great medieval arsenals where Amalfitan warships were once built beneath huge stone arches. These galleys helped make Amalfi one of the naval powers of medieval Europe and their build quality, strength and speed were famous across the sea. That long maritime story still fits Costa d'Amalfi FC perfectly. A club representing a coastline built on sailors, merchants and sea trade. The name itself, clearly adopted for wider appeal, is less about one single town and more about an entire historic coastline whose identity has always been tied to the Mediterranean. Like the medieval republic that once dominated the seas from its small coastal base, today’s football team dreams of punching above its weight once again. Enjoyed discovering the history behind this badge? This story also appears in Wolsey Academy's Renaissance History curriculum, where students explore the people, places, ideas and events that shaped the Renaissance through enquiry-based lessons, projects and historical investigations. Teachers can browse the full collection at www.wolseyacademy.com/shop and receive 50% off any lesson bundle using the exclusive #GetTheBadgeIn code GTBI50.