A German shirt tends to be one colour, used generously. Signal yellow across the whole body, red wall to wall, green with almost no white relief. While other leagues moved toward tonal patterns and gradient panels, Germany kept doing the thing that reads from the far end of a stand.

It also makes these the most forgiving shirts to wear as ordinary clothing. A flat block of colour behaves like a normal garment in a way a busy all-over pattern does not.

The Bundesliga is the only one of the big five with a genuine mid-season pause. The league stops for several weeks over winter and resumes in the new year, which changes the shape of the season and the way shirts get worn — a Bundesliga shirt does not go through the December grind that an English one does.

The season also runs on a different calendar: it starts later in the summer and has a longer pause than its neighbours. If you are buying in January, this is the league whose shirts are mid-season rather than half finished.

In Germany the bottom two clubs are relegated outright, and the club finishing sixteenth plays a two-legged play-off against a side from the division below. It is the most German thing in European football: structured, slightly merciful, and dramatic almost every time it happens.

Why it matters for a shirt: a German club in sixteenth place is not finished. The two-legged tie at the end of a German season is worth knowing about if you follow a club that spends time there.

German shirts are the easiest ones here to wear without it being an event. Big colour, no fussy pattern, roomy enough to layer. If the person you are buying for is not a person who wears football shirts, this is the shelf to start them on.

And because the cuts are generous, sizing is the least stressful part of the process. Your normal size will be right for the large majority of people.