An Italian shirt is cut close. Not tight in an athletic-compression sense — shaped, the way a well-made casual shirt is shaped. The shoulder sits narrower and the body tapers, which is why an Italian shirt looks better on a person and worse on a hanger than anything else here.

The practical consequence: if you normally buy a German size and feel it is loose, the Italian equivalent will be right. If you are used to an English shirt and order your usual size in an Italian one, it will feel different. Between sizes, go up.

Serie A held onto positional numbering well after the other big leagues had moved to fixed squad numbers. That is why defenders in Italy still commonly wear 2 through 6 — the number is a leftover from a system that has otherwise disappeared.

It also means an Italian shirt with a number on the back reads slightly differently to an English one. A 3 or a 5 is a defender's number and looks like one. If you are printing a name set for someone who knows the game, this is the league where the number carries the most information.

Italian design has always been conservative in the good sense: strong colour identity, minimal ornament, and a reluctance to chase whatever the season's template is. That restraint is why an older Serie A shirt does not read as dated the way an older shirt from somewhere else sometimes does.

It is also the reason these are the shirts people keep longest. A design that was not trying to be contemporary does not stop being contemporary.

Measure the chest rather than ordering by letter. On Italian cuts the two disagree more often than people expect, and the letter sizes between Italian and English shirts are not equivalent.

If the shirt is going to be worn as clothing, your measured size is right. If it is going over anything — a base layer, a hoodie, a coat — go up once, and do not talk yourself out of it. An Italian shirt worn too tight is the most common mistake on this shelf, and it is entirely avoidable.