Up until I was about 12 years old, I never had a coach that put much emphasis on tactics. Maybe my coaches weren’t that tactically savvy, so we just went out and played. But then, when I was around 12 or so, my club team somehow got a coach from Napoli who had spent years as a professional player in the Serie B in Italy. He didn’t speak any English in the beginning, so his wife had to translate at training sessions and games. He was missing half a finger from what we always believed was some shady dealing with the Italian underground.

But the dude could ball. And he knew and understood the game better than anyone I had ever met in my life. He taught me a lot about the game and he definitely helped cultivate my love for the sport. Every once in awhile on Sunday mornings he would take me to the house of one of his fellow friends from Napoli and we would watch Italian League games at 6am on the live feed on RAI. (this was before Fox Soccer Channel was airing them all). Seeing the passion that these cats had for the sport had a huge influence in shaping my relationship with the sport. He was also the first coach i ever had that would talk about tactics with us. We were young, but he introduced us to tactics and an understanding of how to play as a team. One of the things I will always remember about his teams, were that from a tactical standpoint, they all played pretty much the same. They all played 4-4-2. The classic diamond with two forwards, one attacking midfielder just behind them, a holding midfielder, two wingers and four in the back.

When we were working on this graphic, I kept thinking about those years when Gennaro was my coach and how much of an influence he has had on my relationship with the sport. It reminded me about the impact that individuals have on our lives and about how something as random as working on a “diamond” graphic can take you back to an entirely different time in your life and bring back the memories of being a kid and falling in love with the sport. Good times.

This graphic is inspired by a little bit of all of those things. So throw your diamonds in the sky!

The BPFC Diamond tee is available in the Bumpy Pitch online store.

When we launched our first of collection of shirts back at the end of 2008, we focused on old NASL teams. We wanted to show some of the history of soccer in the US, and highlight some of these vintage teams. Plus the logos on some of them were so fresh. There are plenty of logos these days that are busy. Some of them have so much going on. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes there is nothing better than a clean and minimal logo. And that is what the Atlanta Apollos had. In fact, it is one of my favorites.

As background, the Atlanta Apollos were originally the Atlanta Chiefs, and they were founded in 1967 when the Atlanta Braves, Inc received a franchise in the old NPSL. After the 1967 season, the NPSL merged with the United Soccer Association thus forming the NASL. After a couple of seasons of never really performing well, and barely surviving years that saw many NASL teams fold, the Atlanta Chiefs renamed itself the Atlanta Apollos and were sold to the owners of the Atlanta Hawks. In their one year in the league playing as the Apollos, they finished last in their conference. Not a memorable franchise, but a very memorable logo.

The first version we did of this graphic was on a red shirt. Then we tested out doing it on a blue shirt. we made a few samples and for some reason we never ended up producing them on that blue. There are a couple floating around out there (Sacha Kljestan has one – hit the jump to check it out). But now, we decided to finally produce the Atlanta Apollos on a blue tee. It’s a different blue than the samples we did a couple years ago, but it works really well. We also added a small little hit that reads ATL to give a shout to one of the great cities in the US.

The Atlanta Apollos shirt is now available in the Bumpy Pitch online store.

And if you feel like it, check out Sacha in that mysterious blue Apollos shirt and Ryan Seacrest in the OG red after the jump.

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Most of you out there know that we grew up in the US. That we do our best to manufacture everything we produce in the US. That all of our design, printing and finishing is done here in the US. We’re proud of our roots and we try and hold it down as much as possible.

Last year we released a 4th of July graphic celebrating independence. Both as a nation and as an independent company. And today we are releasing a new graphic celebrating independence once again. But this time with the focus on uWith this year’s version we wanted to keep things simple and understated. We went with a large USA with the word “Made” underneath. We tried to keep the layout simple and give it a vintage vibe with the typeset and layout that was used. The final element which is wrapped around the BPFC features the year 1776 in roman numerals. Another hat tip to the past and the nation that we’re proud to be from.

The 4th of July tee comes in two colorways. Red and white and blue and white. Both are available exclusively in the Bumpy Pitch online store.