#1 - West Germany 1988-91 Home Shirt by adidas

After over a year of planning, research, discussion, design and sheer hard work producing hundreds and thousands of words for your reading pleasure, we can now proudly reveal our Greatest Football Shirt Ever:

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This is it - the shirt we believe cannot be beaten on design and sheer beauty, and it belongs to (West) Germany, worn between 1988 and 1991.

Often admired and beautifully executed, this was a shirt that opened our eyes as to what the future of football kit design could be like. Modern-looking, but not liable to get stuck in a time warp a year or two after its launch, this shirt quickly established itself as a classic in so many different ways.

#2 - England 2009-10 Home Shirt by Umbro

It's time for us to reveal the Second Greatest Football Shirt Ever, but which one will it be? So many iconic designs haven't even been mentioned in our countdown so far, and they can't all occupy the final two spaces of our list... so which shirt takes its place at Number 2? The answer is as follows:

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It's England's home shirt, worn during 2009 and 2010. Look up 'understated' in the dictionary and you'll find the above picture in the definition.

A great football shirt can be defined in many ways; complexity of detail, use of colour, acknowledgement of tradition, originality of design, sheer modernity... but this one has its own clearly defined qualities. Here are our comments to hopefully explain why our second best shirt is really all-white...

#3 - Netherlands 1988 Home Shirt by adidas

Forty-seven shirts down, and now just three to go in our 50 Greatest Football Shirts Ever countdown. Today, it's time to find out who has won our metaphorical bronze medal in our self-appointed valhalla of shirt design, and it's this...

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...the Netherlands home shirt that made as big an impact as the team wearing it during the Euro 88 tournament in West Germany. Worn by the Dutch in only their five games of that campaign, this was proof positive that adidas were truly breaking new ground back in the 1980's... but what specifically catches the eye of the 50GFSE panel?

Here's our thoughts on what makes this shirt Total Genius...

#4 - Denmark 1986-87 Home Shirt by Hummel

Stick out your thumb and hitch a ride, everybody - we're heading for Classic Shirt Territory with the latest entry in our 50 Greatest Football Shirts Ever countdown.

Today we bring you the brilliant red home shirt worn by Denmark in 1986 and 1987.

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First worn in the Danes' final World Cup warm-up match against Poland in May of that year, it immediately made an impact with its creative use of pinstripes and contrasting halves, accompanied by the traditional Hummel chevrons running along the sleeves.

But what makes this a superb example of football shirt design rather than garish monstrosity? The 50GFSE panel give you their thoughts...

#5 - Liverpool 1985-87 Home Shirt by adidas

Our 50 Greatest Football Shirts Ever countdown has reached the last five - the best five shirts, according to the beliefs of the judging panel. For that reason and that reason alone, we thought we'd share all of our comments for each of the last five shirts, rather than letting one of us divulge our thoughts as a representative for the panel.

With that in mind, we enter the home straight beginning with Shirt No.5 - the Liverpool home shirt worn between 1985 and 1987.

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Directly following the ground-breaking pinstriped design introduced in 1982, this adidas offering might have struggled to match the success of its predecessor, and yet it proved more than popular. So what were its redeeming features and why is it deserving of such high praise in our countdown? Here's what we thought...

#6 - Juventus 1985 Home Shirt by Kappa

When anyone mentions this shirt, it immediately conjures up several names: Platini, Laudrup, Ariston, Tardelli... and er... Rush... maybe...

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There's no doubt this is an iconic shirt, a stone cold classic, but this Top 50 isn't necessarily about iconic shirts - it's about the greatest designs ever, so can it still hold its own on that front?  The answer is OF COURSE IT DAMN WELL CAN!!!!  Just look at the bloody thing!!!! It's beautiful! How dare you even question it?!?! GO TO YOUR ROOM!!!!

Let's put some context around this... and this is where the line between iconic and great start to blur, so forgive me if I occasionally stray into iconography.

#7 - France 1984-86 Home Shirt by adidas

It's not often you can say that a football shirt is so good that it prompts a number of later tributes to be released, but that's what we have here. France's home shirt, most commonly associated with their winning Euro 84 campaign, was rubber-stamped as a classic when its national team finally staked its claim to be one of the best in the world, and with good reason.

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This was unquestionably one of those moments when you wondered why a shirt with just a few simple elements hadn't been thought of before. It is, at the end of the day, just a blue shirt with one broad red stripe, three thinner white ones below it and three more along the sleeves (as seen on all adidas shirts at the time). So why is it such a beautiful thing?

#8 - Newcastle United 1995-97 Home Shirt by adidas

It’s not uncommon to associate certain football shirts with a winning period in a team’s history – Argentina in 1986 or Manchester United in 1993, for instance – but association with a particular player is an overlooked phenomenon that happens almost as often. In the case of Newcastle United’s home shirt for 1993-1995, it will always (for me at least) be associated with one player and one player alone – Alan Shearer.

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Not that a single player can elevate a shirt to greatness single-handedly. It just so happens that this one came completely out of the blue and was unlike so many others in its design. What sealed its place in the memories of so many, however, was when it appeared on the wiry frame of the world’s most expensive player when presented to Newcastle fans in 1996.