When did England players first start having their names printed on their shirts?

Answer 1

The player's mums, used to write their initials on the inside of the collars. However, the players got confused, bless 'em, so the clubs wrote their full name on the back of the shirt. It was still a bit difficult for the boys, so they printed them in capitals Ahhhh.
And some people thought that it was done for the fans!

Answer 2

Not really an answer to the question, but an interesting little piece of related trivia: the first sports teams to do this were the old American Football League (American football) in the USA in the 1960's. When they merged with the NFL the names on the backs of the shirts were adopted their too.

Answer 3

I like the autograph thing, but that's not what happened, close though. You see, back in the day, the game wasn't played by people with posh names like Beckham or Henry or Owen. No, it was played by your average working stiff, with regular common names like Brown, Jones and Smith, so to tell them apart they gave them numbers, and each number was supposed to correspond to a certain position, so you could tell which Brown, Jones or Smith was doing what. That all changed when swish baggers like Dalglish, Bremner and Morrison started playing in the league, and the squads became bigger, the numbers no longer necessarily matched a position, so the players name was stitched above the number, which was retained to facilitate ease of recognition when being substituted. It became a universal standard for English league teams in the late eighties.

Answer 4

in the 1960's

Answer 5

Are you refering to international only, or also Premiership?

Anyway, I think it's 1990-something. Not to sure.

Sorry I can't help.

Answer 6

When it was noticed they couldn't sign their own autographs and they needed help with the spelling