Stripes do most of the work in Spanish football. Barcelona's vertical bars are the most copied design in the sport. Athletic's are the same idea in red. Then there is the sash — one diagonal band across the chest, which sounds like it should look like a mistake and never does.

And then there is the plain white shirt, which is the quietest thing on the shelf and probably the most worn. A white shirt hides nothing: every mark from a season shows. It is also the one that looks best with a name printed on the back, because there is nothing competing with it.

A La Liga squad list runs from 1 to 25. Within that, the numbers 1, 13 and 25 are reserved for goalkeepers — which is why a Spanish outfield player almost never wears 13 and why a keeper in Spain is visibly identifiable by number alone.

The rest of the list is where youth players appear. A number in the high twenties on a Spanish shirt usually means someone who came through the academy, and those are the shirts that become interesting in retrospect.

Everyone arrives at this league for one of two shirts. Both are worth owning. But the shelf underneath them is where the stripe variations, the sashes and the regional colour stories actually live, and those are the designs that get asked about by people who already have the famous one.

If you are buying a second Spanish shirt, this is the layer to shop in. It reads as knowledge rather than as support, which is a different and better thing to be given.

Spanish cuts sit between the two extremes. There is more shape through the body than an English shirt, but it is not the narrow Italian shoulder. Your usual size is normally fine, and if you plan to wear it over anything, go up once.

The thing to check on a striped Spanish shirt is the alignment at the side seam. On cheaper versions the stripes do not line up where the panels meet, and it is visible the moment someone moves. On a good one they run straight through.