Should Jewellery Be Brought Back to the Pitch?

Pull up any old football photo and you'll notice the things modern football has quietly edited out. The heavier shirts, the muddy collars, the untucked sleeves, and the little flash of metal sitting just above the neckline.

That detail runs through every era of the game. The 60s and 70s shots of mud-streaked shirts and visible chains. The 80s and 90s line-ups with crosses tucked just under the collar. The kits may change every decade, but the small pieces of metal that meant something to the men wearing them don't.

Looking back now, those details feel inseparable from the picture. Not because jewellery made them better footballers, or because a chain ever scored a goal, but because it told you something about the person wearing the shirt.

Pelé had his pendant. Maradona had his chains and crosses. Ronaldinho with the chain shining as he danced through defenders. These details didn't replace the football. They added to the mythology around it.

But today, the rule is clear. Jewellery comes off. A loose chain can catch, a ring can split skin, and no one serious about the game wants safety ignored. And that's what makes the question interesting, because this isn't really about whether a player should be allowed to wear a gold chain for 90 minutes. It's about what football loses when those personal details are stripped away before the whistle.

What fans really miss

Most football fans aren't sitting around demanding jewellery at kick-off.

What fans miss, when they talk about old football, is rarely one single thing. It's the feeling. The roughness, the unpredictability, the sense that the game had more room for character before VAR, body cameras on referees, and frame-by-frame analysis turned every moment into something to be measured, managed and reviewed.

They miss players who felt larger than life. The ones who tried things that didn't always make sense on paper. The ones who played like they had something to prove. And something to lose. The Ronaldinhos, the R9s, the players who made football feel less rehearsed and more alive.

That's not to say the modern game is worse. It's faster, cleaner, more tactical, and more professional in almost every way. But there's a reason fans still talk about the old game with that look on their face. It left more room for expression, more room for madness, and more room for the players who looked and moved like nobody else.

Some of that nostalgia is rose-tinted, of course it is. Not everything about old football was better. But maybe, in the process of cleaning the game up, football lost some of the magic that made it feel alive.

Off the pitch, it's everywhere

Modern footballers haven't stopped wearing jewellery. If anything, football's relationship with jewellery has never been more visible.

Cristian Romero styled in CRAFTD for Sports World Magazine.

It shows up everywhere the player does. On arrival. On the team coach. In warm-up shots, in dressing-room photos and post match celebrations. On punditry sofas, in podcast studios, fashion shoots, brand campaigns, tunnel walks and training-ground content. You name it. Every space the modern game opens up, jewellery is integral to how players carry themselves through it.

Whether it's a chain, a watch, a ring or a gemstone necklace, each piece says something about the player long before he touches the ball.

Manuel Akanji styled in CRAFTD for Sports World.

And as the summer World Cup approaches, the rules themselves have started to soften. IFAB's 2026/27 update still bans chains, rings, bracelets and all other jewellery, but it now allows certain non-dangerous items to be worn if they are safely and securely covered, including pieces that carry cultural, religious or personal meaning. The door hasn't opened, but the language has.

In some sports though, jewellery and personal objects still sit closer to the action. Baseball players wear chains on the field, fighters walk to the ring wearing jewellery, and athletes are winning gold medals with gold pendants around their necks.

Leo Neugebauer wearing CRAFTD at the Olympics. Read more here.

Every sport has its own version of the line, but football's is one of the cleanest.

Once the match starts, the player is stripped back to the essentials. Shirt, shorts, socks, boots and shin pads. Nothing loose, nothing extra, nothing that might catch, cut or get in the way. The referee, meanwhile, walks out with a camera strapped to his chest.

It was never just the jewellery

In a sport where every player is expected to dress the same, the smallest details start to matter. The chain tucked under the shirt. The boots in the vibrant colour. The haircut your manager probably hated. Every lad reading this understands that feeling. Turning up to school in the trainers you weren't supposed to wear, not because anyone else cared, but because for one day, you wanted to feel like yourself.

The players we remember most are usually the ones who found a way to be unmistakably themselves inside the game. A chain can be flash, of course. But it can also be family, faith, or a reminder of how far someone has come. To the crowd, it might not mean much. To the person wearing it, it means everything.

A pendant kissed before a penalty tells you something very different to a Rolex in an arrival photo. One is style. The other is ritual. And football has always understood ritual. Jewellery, at its best, belonged to that world.

Not fashion, but feeling.