Trevor Francis wore Stylo Matchmakers.
That sentence means something to me.
Not because I want to drag an old photograph out of the archive and pretend history belongs to us.
It doesn’t.
History belongs to the people who made it.
Trevor was one of them.
And when he died, I was genuinely sad.
Not celebrity sad.
Not the sort of thing where everyone posts the same photograph for a day and moves on.
I felt it.
Because Trevor was part of a football world I loved.
And, in a small way, part of the reason I believed Stylo Matchmakers deserved to come back.
More Than The £1 Million Man
Everybody knows the headline.
Britain’s first £1 million footballer.
It became attached to Trevor Francis forever.
But the fee can hide the footballer.
And the footballer was exceptional.
He made his Birmingham City debut as a teenager.
He was quick.
Elegant.
Brave.
He could carry the ball at defenders and make something happen.
Then came Nottingham Forest.
Brian Clough.
European football.
And that goal in the 1979 European Cup Final.
Francis arriving at the back post and heading Forest into history.
That one moment would have been enough for most careers.
Trevor had plenty more.
England.
Manchester City.
Sampdoria.
Atalanta.
Rangers.
Sheffield Wednesday.
He belonged to an era when great footballers went out and played football.
They did not have to spend half their lives explaining themselves.
And He Wore Stylo
This is the bit I still love.
Stylo Matchmakers did not invent its history.
We inherited it.
Pelé wore Stylo.
George Best wore Stylo.
Kevin Keegan wore Stylo.
Trevor Francis wore Stylo.
Those names are not a mood board.
They happened.
There are photographs.
There are boots.
There are stories.
And when you take on a brand with that history, you inherit something else.
Responsibility.
You cannot stick an old badge on a cheap boot and call it heritage.
That is not heritage.
That is fancy dress.
The original Stylo worked because the product was simple.
Black boots.
Good leather.
Made for football.
The boot knew its place.
The player was the star.
Bringing It Back
When I brought Stylo Matchmakers back, I did not want to recreate 1970.
That would have been pointless.
Football had moved on.
Boots had moved on.
Players had moved on.
But not everything that had disappeared needed replacing.
Some things were better.
Simplicity was better.
Character was better.
A boot being a boot was better.
So we took the old Stylo DNA and tried to move it forward.
That became the Heirship Sixty Eight.
The Heirship Sixty Eight
The idea was straightforward.
Take inspiration from the Stylo boots worn by players such as Trevor Francis.
Keep the shape.
Keep the black.
Keep the understatement.
Modernise the construction.
Make it lighter.
Make it relevant.
Make a boot somebody could actually play football in today.
Not a replica.
Not memorabilia.
A football boot.
The Heirship Sixty Eight was our modernised interpretation of the boots from that Stylo era.
Then something happened that made it much more important to me.
Trevor supported the return of Stylo.
And he signed the Heirship Sixty Eight.
I still think about that.
Here was one of the men who had worn Stylo when it was genuinely part of top-level football.
Decades later, the brand had disappeared and then returned.
And Trevor was there again.
Original player.
Original story.
New boot.
Same name.
There is something beautifully simple about that.
You Cannot Manufacture That
Modern marketing spends fortunes trying to create authenticity.
It has meetings about authenticity.
PowerPoints about authenticity.
Strategies about authenticity.
That should probably tell us something.
You cannot manufacture what Trevor gave us.
He wore Stylo.
Years passed.
The company disappeared.
I brought it back.
We rebuilt the type of boot he had played in.
And he supported us.
Then he signed it.
No marketing agency could invent that story.
And if they did, nobody would believe it.
That is heritage.
Proper Football
Trevor came from another version of the game.
That does not mean everything was better then.
It wasn’t.
But some things were.
A brilliant footballer did not have to become a lifestyle company.
He did not need his own logo.
He did not need a camera following him into breakfast.
He did not need a limited-edition boot released every six weeks.
Trevor Francis played football.
Very, very well.
People watched him because of that.
Simple.
I miss some of that simplicity.
It is one of the reasons I brought Stylo back.
Football became obsessed with making everything bigger.
Bigger launches.
Bigger sponsorships.
Bigger transfer announcements.
Bigger personalities.
Sometimes bigger is just louder.
Trevor never needed the noise.
When Trevor Died
His death hit me harder than I expected.
Perhaps because I had reached an age where the players and people who shaped your football life start disappearing.
One by one.
And every time it happens, another little bridge to that football goes with them.
Trevor was one of those bridges for me.
There was also something personal about the Stylo connection.
I had spent years trying to bring this old football brand back from nowhere.
People can look at that and think it is just business.
It never was.
If it was only business, I would have picked something easier.
Stylo had ghosts.
Good ghosts.
Pelé.
Best.
Keegan.
Francis.
And when one of those men actually looked at what we were doing and supported it, that mattered.
Trevor did not need us.
We needed people like Trevor.
That is an important distinction.
Heritage Is Not Nostalgia
There is a line you have to be careful with when you revive an old brand.
Look backwards too much and you become a museum.
Ignore the past and there was no point buying the bloody thing in the first place.
The trick is to carry the right things forward.
Not copy them.
Carry them.
That was what the Heirship Sixty Eight was supposed to do.
Take an old idea.
Respect it.
Improve it.
Put it back on a football pitch.
Trevor understood that.
His signature on those boots became part of that story.
A small thing.
But an important one.
Trevor Francis Was One Of Ours
I hate it when brands call everyone “family.”
Usually they mean somebody has bought a T-shirt.
So I will not say Trevor belonged to Stylo.
He didn’t.
Trevor Francis belonged to football.
But for part of his extraordinary career, Stylo Matchmakers were on his feet.
And decades later, when we tried to bring the brand back, he supported us again.
I will always be grateful for that.
When I look at those signed Heirship Sixty Eights now, I do not just see a pair of football boots.
I see a line running through football history.
From the boots Trevor wore.
To the boot we rebuilt.
From the old Stylo.
To the new one.
From one generation to another.
That is what heritage should be.
Not nostalgia.
Continuity.
Trevor Francis was a wonderful footballer.
A history maker.
A European champion.
And one of the men who made Stylo Matchmakers mean something in the first place.
I was proud that he wore our boots.
I was proud that he supported their return.
And I was deeply sad when he died.
Rest in peace, Trevor.
Proper player. Proper football. One of ours.
Love this mate, resonates because I feel the same way. Trevor was a fabulous player and just an all round great bloke, grounded, humble, normal, something which is sadly lacking in a lot of the players of today.