the history of the colors of the shirt between Naples, the Byzantines and Napoleone- Corriere.it

AlbiCelestial headlines Brand in the aftermath of Argentina’s world triumph. Even the Treccani dictionary recognizes at the term albiceleste one of the metonymies more notes of football heraldry. White and blue – on a black or white field, depending on the era or the opponents – are the symbol of Argentina; nation and national. From late yesterday afternoon in Doha something will change, with the tercera
the coveted third star that will camp above the logo of Select after thirty-six years. In the collective imagination for the shirt remains almost identical. Behind the colors of the shirt that Argentina has sported for more than a century are intertwined political, religious and artistic stories. The union between the albiceleste shirt and the inseparable nation of yesterday’s world champion.

The white and the blue of the Select they are also the colors of the flag, in the most classic of banner-game uniform associations. Among the few exceptions are our Azzurri and the Dutch Oranje; together with the white of Germany, the yellow of Australia and the blue of Japan. A rule that instead applies to all of South America, with the sole exception of Venezuela: the vinotinto of the shirt is not reflected in the yellow, red and blue of the flag; as Colombia and Ecuador do instead, from 1819 to 1831 united in Caracas in the state of Grande Colombia.

These were the years of the revolutions which in less than thirty years gave South America the geopolitical shape with which we know it today. Between 1808 and 1833 the Spanish-American wars of independencewith the Libertadores putting an end to the dominion of the Conquistadores of Spain (to which only Cuba will remain, until the war of 1898 against the USA).

Simon Bolivar is the most famous independence leaderbut there are also Hidalgo and Morelos in Mexico and Jose de San Martin in Chile. TO
to light the flame of revolution in the New World they are for Napoleonic Wars in Europe. By invading Spain in 1808, France provided the subjects of the overseas viceroyalties with the historic occasion to rebel, together with a vast symbolic corpus, made up of tricolor flags and rosettes.

So in 1812 the General Manuel Belgrano — the most recurring name in Argentine toponymy, with his name a famous cruiser sunk in 1982 during the Falklands/Malvinas war was baptized — establishes the Sun of May as emblem of the flag of the United Provinces of the Southin revolt against the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata. He chooses the colors of what will become the first Argentine flag just white and blue.

The choice of white is not surprising: it has always been a symbol of honesty and purity – at least in the West -, while in China and Japan it is considered a funeral color, associated with the pallor of death. Blue has a more intricate history. It derives from blue, which refers to the Byzantine tradition, as a representation of the nobility of the emperors in mosaics. The expensive ultramarine lapis lazuli — from the Middle East — was then associated with the Madonna. The color of nobilityperfect to symbolize the elevation of the Virgin above the human condition.

From Raphael and Tiepolo, blue arrives in South America through the Spanish domination. In 1771 Charles III of Bourbon — sovereign particularly devoted to the Marian cult, having also reigned over Naples — to celebrate the birth of his son he founded the Order of Charles III, choosing white and blue as colors. The sash of the Order was worn by loyalist subjects in the New World against Bonapartist revolutionaries. The royalists had the sash, the revolutionaries chose the cockade which in Argentina, however, kept the white and blue: Belgrano said he was inspired by the sky and the clouds above the boundless pampas.

It didn’t take long before the colors of the flag changed to those of the national football team. At the end of the 19th century, the British brought football to Argentina: in 1891, the oldest championship in South America was born. Qu
I went there in 1902 Select makes his debut against Uruguay (6-0 victory in Montevideo) wearing a totally blue shirt. For the appearance of the albiceleste you have to wait six years: the July 2, 1908 in São Paulo, against a representative of the best players in the Paulista league in Brazil. The beginning of the greatest football rivalry in South America, and a marriage that has been going on for 114 years.