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In association football, some national and club sides include one or more stars as part of (or beside) the badge (often referred to as a "crest") appearing on their shirt, to represent important trophies the team has previously won. Often this is a unilateral decision by a team itself, rather than a specific privilege earned or sanctioned by any governing body and as such, the relevance of these stars on a club's shirt is somewhat tenuous.
Contents
Club
The first team in association football history to adopt a star was Juventus, who added one above their badge in 1958 to represent their tenth Italian Football Championship and Serie A title, at the time, the new national record. This was an extension of the existing convention by which the reigning champions are entitled to display the scudetto on their shirts for the following season. The star was later formally adopted by some organisations as a symbol for ten titles, and the ratio of one star for ten titles has become the "most common" arrangement.
Juventus unofficially won their 30th league title in 2011–12, but a dispute with the Italian Football Federation, who stripped Juventus of their 2004–05 and 2005–06 titles due to their involvement in a 2006 Italian football scandal, left their official total at 28. However, they elected to wear no stars at all the following season. Juventus won their 30th title in 2013–14 and thus earned the right to wear their third star, however, club president Andrea Agnelli stated that the club suspended the use of the stars until another team wins their 20th championship, thus having the right to wear two stars, "to emphasise Juventus' superiority". However, for the 2015–16 season, Juventus reintroduced the stars and added the third star to their jersey as well with new kit manufacturers Adidas.
The Turkish league introduced a similar scheme in 2000, with one star per five titles.
In 2003, Rangers F.C. displayed five stars above the badge on their shirts to symbolise their then 50 league titles. Rangers have won the most league titles in football with 54 and thus have the most stars above their badge to signify this. Rangers' rivals, Celtic, have only one star above their badge despite winning 47 league titles. Their star represents their triumph in the 1967 European Cup.
Football in Germany has two official star systems operating in parallel. In 2004, the DFL, which governs the Bundesliga (the top 2 divisions), introduced Verdiente Meistervereine (roughly "distinguished champion clubs"). This has a sliding scale of 1, 2, 3, and 4 stars for 3, 5, 10, and 20 titles. It includes only Bundesliga titles, excluding titles from before the formation of the Bundesliga in 1963, and from the former East German League. Dynamo Berlin (playing in the fourth level) unilaterally began wearing three unapproved stars for its East German titles. In November 2005, the DFB, which governs non-Bundesliga football, allowed former champions playing outside the Bundesliga to display a single star inscribed with the number of titles. In 2007, Dynamo Berlin switched to a single approved star inscribed with the number 10. Greuther Fürth retains three silver stars on its club badge, but not on it shirts.
Major League Soccer's previously informal system, one star per MLS Cup title, was standardised in 2006, with the defending champions wearing the MLS Scudetto, like the Serie A system, for one season before adding a new star. Starting in 2012, the Scudetto was replaced with a single gold star worn by reigning champions above any other silver championship stars. In 2016, this system changed again in recognition of the LA Galaxy's fifth championship title: champion clubs during their title defence will wear a large gold star (featuring the year of the league win) above other smaller stars set in silver; clubs with five championships (presently only the Galaxy) will wear one gold star; and teams with one-to-four MLS Cup wins will wear one silver star for each victory. In Australia, they also use a system based around different coloured stars for different trophy wins: Australian winners of the AFC Champions League will wear a gold star inscribed with the number of wins, while A-League and W-League victory is recognised with a silver star similarly embossed; reigning league or FFA Cup champions will also wear a gold competition emblem in the season following the championship.
In Norway a team will display a star for every 10 titles in Tippeligaen. Rosenborg is the only team with more than 10 titles. Since 2006, all Swedish football clubs that have won ten or more Swedish championships have added a star above their badge. The same system has applied in the Dutch Eredivisie from the 2007–08 season onwards. This innovation was suggested by PSV, after the club won its twentieth title in 2007. Ajax currently have the right to wear three stars since they have won the league more than 30 times. PSV have the right to wear two stars with their 21 league titles, while Feyenoord and HVV Den Haag can add one for their 14 and 10 titles, respectively. HVV won all titles before 1915 and is currently playing in the fourth level of the Dutch league system. In Malta, Floriana, Valletta and Sliema Wanderers boast 2 Golden Stars on their badges having won 25, 20 and 26 titles, respectively, while Hibernians have one star thanks to their 10 titles. No other team in the Maltese League has the golden star on their badge.
Occasionally, stars are added to badges of successor or phoenix clubs for the achievements of defunct predecessors. An example of this is the Tampa Bay Rowdies. They added a star to represent the Soccer Bowl, the championship of the original NASL, won by the original Tampa Bay Rowdies in 1975. The club has since added a second star, after the new club won the 2012 edition of the resurrected Soccer Bowl in the new NASL. This approach is atypical: neither the Montreal Impact nor the Seattle Sounders FC franchises retained the stars worn by the old clubs when they joined the MLS. In the case of the Impact, the new team paid tribute to the former team's first title through the stripes on their badge.
As well as predecessor clubs, victories in the national leagues of defunct countries have also been represented by stars. FC Dynamo Kyiv have two stars, commemorating championships won in the Soviet and Ukrainian football league systems. The same is true of Belgrade clubs Partizan and Red Star who have won titles in Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro and present-day Serbia, while Spartak Moscow's stars refer to their Soviet Top League and Russian Football Premier League achievements.
The star has given rise to a byword to winning trophies. An example of this was when Fawaz Al-Hasawi, owner of Nottingham Forest, was quoted as saying "maybe [Nottingham Forest] will have a third star".
International
Brazil added three stars above their badge after winning their third World Cup in 1970. Italy did likewise in 1982. Germany added three in 1996, one in each of the German flag's colours. All world champions have since followed suit. Brazil and Italy have since added more stars, after they won later tournaments (cf. 1994, 2002, 2006), while Germany are the most recent nation to add a star, commemorating their 2014 triumph mere hours after victory in the Final.
Uruguay display four stars, regarding their triumphs in the 1924 and 1928 Olympics as equivalent to their later World Cup wins, as there was no World Cup at the time. Eurosport claim that FIFA only recognises the two World Cup wins, while the Daily Mail state that "when FIFA revised its constitution in 1950, they formally recognised that Uruguay were four-time world champions"
In the equipment regulations for FIFA competitions, section 18.2 states "Those Member Associations that have won the FIFA World Cup may put a symbol on the playing shirt representing this accomplishment and the number of times won." The form of symbol is not specified, although the accompanying illustrative example depicts a gold star.
Ad hoc adoptions
More recently, club teams have added stars either upon winning a landmark trophy, or in response to a rival team's having added stars. In the Romanian first league, Steaua uses 2 stars above their badge since they won their 20th title. Since then Dinamo added a star for the 18 championships they won. Manchester United sported a star in their UEFA Champions League matches on their special European home kit between 1997 and 1999. To celebrate their second victory that year, they added an extra star to that kit for the 1999–00 season. Liverpool likewise wore four stars in 2001–02, their first campaign in the competition since the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985. They wore five stars in the competition in 2005–06 after their fifth victory. Instead of stars, UEFA introduced a multiple winner badge in 2000–01 season, currently worn by five teams who have won the Champions League either five times or more in total, or three times in a row.
Occasionally, stars are temporarily added for one season, usually to commemorative kits to celebrate the anniversary of a particular event in the club's history. Burnley sported two stars on their 2006–07 shirt, for the club's 125th anniversary, to celebrate their two league titles in 1921 and 1960. Likewise Bury in 2009–10, also for their 125th anniversary, commemorating their 1900 and 1903 FA Cup triumphs; Bury have since revived the stars, from 2011–12, after a season's absence. Commemorating anniversaries in this way is not confined to English clubs: Peruvian side Universitario celebrated their 90th anniversary by adding 26 stars to their kits worn home and away. This is not a practice limited to clubs, as in 2004, Denmark wore a star on their shirts specially for Euro 2004, to commemorate their victory in the competition in 1992.
In women's football, the emerging ad hoc standard is to wear stars on the sleeve instead of above the badge. Two of the four teams that have won the FIFA Women's World Cup to date — Norway and Germany — use this practice, as did three-time Women's World Cup winners, the USA, until moving the stars to the back collar in 2007. The United States has returned its two stars to above the badge on their new uniforms for the 2011 Women's World Cup, and have added a third since their 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup championship.
The practice of using stars to signify major titles has spread to other football codes, and to unrelated sports. For example, in rugby union, Toulon added a star above its badge after winning the Heineken Cup in 2013, and added a second star immediately after winning the same competition in 2014 and a third after winning the inaugural European Rugby Champions Cup in 2015. In basketball, the men's team of Indiana University Bloomington added five stars to its shorts, representing its five NCAA championships, for the 2015 NCAA tournament, and made the stars at that location a permanent fixture for the 2015–16 season. St Joseph High School added 4 stars to their badge in 2016 to commemorate their 4 CIF Titles in boys basketball.
List
Excluding the temporary stars, the following teams have chosen to add stars to their shirts:
Men
Women
Note: Some women teams, like France, Italy or Brazil, wear the men's stars on their jersey.
CAF
Stars that do not signify particular titles
American club Philadelphia Union has 13 stars that represent the 13 original colonies of the United States. Fellow Major League Soccer franchise Montreal Impact have four stars on their badge, which are symbolic of the nationalities of the peoples who founded the city of Montreal. The four nations are regularly used in Montreal imagery, as the city flag and coat of arms both reference them.
The badge of Peñarol of Uruguay has 11 stars for the 11 players.
The badge introduced by Manchester City in 1997 had three stars to give it a "more continental feel". The 3 stars do not represent titles or trophies. City brought in a new club badge in 2016 with no stars on it. Sivasspor of Turkey also has three stars on their badge. They do not represent any championships either.
For the 2002–03 season, the badge of Greek club Panathinaikos F.C. had 3 stars. One gold representing the team's partaking in the 1971 European Cup Final, and 2 white stars representing the team's participation at the 1985 European Cup semi-finals and the 1996 UEFA Champions League semi-finals respectively. Because none of these stars represent titles or trophies, opposition fans in Greece mocked this.
The United States Soccer Federation has 3 stars within its badge, which is worn by all U.S. national teams, including the senior men's and women's teams. These stars, unequal in size and with pinwheel shading, are representative of the stars in the flag of the United States rather than to symbolize championship titles (almost all the badges/logos of the US national teams in every sport feature at least one star). The senior women's USSF team displays 3 monochromatic stars above the badge representing their three World Cup titles.
Johor Darul Takzim F.C. has 3 stars above its badge, for each time the club changed its name; from PKENJ to Johor and finally Johor Darul Takzim.
Following the crash of LaMia Flight 2933, Brazilian club Chapecoense incorporated a star into its badge as a tribute to those who perished in the incident.