In 2016, the world of football was undergoing seismic shifts: Britain voted for Brexit, Leicester City produced the Premier League's greatest fairytale of the century, and Pep Guardiola took charge of Manchester City. Against that backdrop, a less noticeable but fundamental change took place in Manchester: the club radically redesigned their badge, laying the visual foundation for their future hegemony for decades to come.
City's circular badge became one of the world's most recognisable brands. Six Premier League titles in 10 years, a historic record of four consecutive league championships and the treble in 2022/23, combined with substantial investment in promotion across Asia, Africa and South America, turned the Manchester badge into a global synonym for success.
But that triumph spawned an unexpected visual epidemic. The circular badge came to be seen across football as the standard template for a ‘proper European badge’. Clubs around the world began blindly copying City's design: non-European teams sought to appear respectable, while mid-table European clubs hoped that rebranding would attract the attention of wealthy Middle Eastern investors.
Anatomy of a copycat template
Circular badges have always existed in football, from Bayern Munich and Chelsea to Fenerbahce and Napoli. Historically, though, the circle was simply one badge shape, within which each club retained its own heraldic logic.
Today, designers are increasingly taking the path of least resistance, reproducing Manchester City's precise geometry:
- An outer ring.
- The club name in a semicircle at the top and a shorter functional word at the bottom.
- The club's founding date split between the two sides.
- Large empty spaces between the upper and lower lettering.
- An inner circle containing a simplified shield or central symbol.
In the US, the format has been adopted not only by newer clubs such as Inter Miami and Charlotte, but also by clubs with history, including Montreal and Pittsburgh Riverhounds. In the Arab world, Al Nassr, Al Jazira, Al Shabab and Pyramids have followed the trend. In Africa, Tanzania's Simba and Namibian flagship club African Stars have taken a similar path. In Europe, Brentford, Bristol City, Toulouse and Alaves have traded their individuality for a faceless circle.
City Football Group's secret objective
Manchester City's original 2016 rebrand was well founded. The old eagle badge, created in 1997, had never caught on with fans because of its excessive detail and the difficulties it caused in producing club merchandise. The club's leadership took a systematic approach: club history expert Gary James gave a series of lectures, exhibitions explained the heraldry of old symbols to supporters, and a survey led to the return of elements from the 1995 badge: the Manchester Ship Canal vessel, three rivers and the Lancashire rose.
But the designers also had an undisclosed corporate objective. City Football Group needed a modular, flexible template that could be adapted instantly for new franchises around the world. That is how the similar badges of New York City, Melbourne City, Girona, Montevideo City Torque and Shenzhen Peng City came about.
A creative dead end for football design
What became a functional franchise solution for the sheikhs' global corporation turned into a creative surrender for other clubs.
The popular arguments that circular badges are convenient for digital services and social media do not stand up to scrutiny. If a team's name is a short word, as with Simba, the empty space in the circle has to be artificially filled with cumbersome additions such as ‘football club’ and small founding-year digits, which become an illegible blur on a smartphone screen. Savings on producing kit and merchandise also matter only for tiny runs of around 100 items and are barely noticeable with sublimation printing.
Blindly reproducing someone else's template erases clubs' individuality, replacing a century of history and tradition with a standardised product for faceless consumption.
