adidas have been forced to alter their shirt printing policy after it emerged that their automatic system rejected attempts to print replica shirts of Arsenal Women’s midfielder Jordan Nobbs.
When buying a replica shirt, fans have the option to add a name of their choice on the back, but ‘Nobbs’ used to get rejected by the system because of its restrictions on “inappropriate language”.
As noted by The Times, a fan by the name of Freya Allum was unable to order a shirt with ‘Nobbs 8’ printed on the back, so she took to Twitter to inform adidas of the clear error with their system. Nobbs herself even ‘liked’ one of Allum’s posts highlighting the issue.
adidas first suggested that the fan try and use the name ‘Nobb’ instead, but when they made the genius realisation that that is not actually Nobbs’ name and she deserves to have her name on the shirt, adidas have since updated their policy to allow it to be used.
However, they did not remove the ten-letter restriction for names on the back of female shirts. Male replica shirts can contain a name containing as many letters as you can imagine, whereas women’s shirts have the ten-letter limit.
Arsenal’s club shop has always permitted the name ‘Nobbs’ to be printed on their shirts, but their website also does not do anything to combat the ten-letter limit, even if a player has a surname longer than that.
It’s bad news for the likes of versatile midfielder Viktoria Schnaderbeck, who is unlikely to see any replica shirts with her 12-letter surname on the back.
As for Nobbs, it seems about time that a player with 60 England caps and three Women’s Super League titles can get a replica shirt with her own name on the back.
After arriving at Arsenal in 2010, Nobbs quickly formed part of a dominant side who won countless trophies. She has helped the team to four Women’s FA Cups and five WSL Cups, and Nobbs will be hoping to add more after making her long-awaited recovery from an ACL tear which saw her miss almost an entire year.