Spain's Red: The Colour Of Championship Football

Red is the colour of championship football right now. Not because of anything mystical about the colour. Because Spain have won four major international tournaments since 2008, and they have done it all in red.

La Roja. The Red. It is not a nickname — it is the shirt. And the shirt has been winning things at a rate that no other national team in the history of the game can match in the modern era.

Where The Red Comes From

Spain's red is historically rooted in the colours of Castile — the central Spanish kingdom whose crown and flag dominated the Iberian Peninsula and, through colonisation, much of the Americas. The red and gold combination — red body, gold or yellow shorts — is Spain's direct inheritance from that Castilian heraldic tradition.

The current flag of Spain runs red and yellow (officially "red and gold"). Spain's football kit has run red since the early twentieth century, and the combination has been consistent enough that the team's nickname — La Roja — is simply a statement of colour identity. Nobody calls England "The Whites" or France "The Blues" in quite the same way as Spain's identity collapses into its shirt.

The away kit has historically been blue — the colour of the Spanish royal house — which creates an interesting reversal: Spain in blue looks slightly wrong, which is the point of an away kit.

How Spain's 2008 Euros Win Started Four Tournaments Of Dominance

The 2008 Euros in Austria and Switzerland. Luis Aragonés had spent two years convincing the Spanish squad that possession-based football, properly executed, was unbeatable. Spain had the players — Xavi, Iniesta, Silva, Villa — but not yet the belief.

They won the tournament. The red shirt worn in the final against Germany in Vienna was the beginning of something. Clean design, darker red than some earlier eras, the Spanish crest sitting on the chest without commentary. Germany were beaten 1-0 by a Torres goal. Spain won their first major tournament in 44 years.

Two years lat