Bohemian FC does not seem to be happy with the third shirt that Ajax launched on Friday. The shirt of the Amsterdammers is a tribute to Bob Marley and his number Three Little Birds, which can be heard regularly in the Johan Cruijff ArenA. The Irish club also launched a shirt in 2018 that paid tribute to Marley, but had to withdraw it after a dispute with the reggae artist’s management and heirs over the rights to use his image.
Bohemian will share the tweet from Ajax on Twitter on Friday, with which the team from Amsterdam launched the new third shirt. “No comment…”, the Irish club writes. The reactions point to the fact that Ajax seems to imitate Bohemian’s initiative. The current number four of the Irish Premier Division also came in 2018 with a shirt that paid tribute to Bob Marley. The reggae artist performed at Dalymount Park, Dublin’s hometown of Bohemian, in 1980, and is still embraced by the club as a result.
No comment… https://t.co/CMXYpaXdnt
— Bohemian Football Club (@bfcdublin) August 20, 2021
For that reason, Bohemian came up with a white shirt with green, yellow and red accents that featured Marley’s photo. The club announced that a license had been purchased for this photo. The shirt’s launch generated a lot of publicity and thousands of people in 45 countries on 5 different continents placed a pre-order to get the jersey. Before the shirt could actually go into production, however, Bohemian had to decide to withdraw it and change it.
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Despite son Ky-Mani Marley calling the shirt “dope,” Bohemian got the management responsible for the interests of Marley’s heirs and estate on his roof. It turned out that Bohemian did not immediately ask them for permission to use the photo of Marley. The third party license for the photo was not enough. “No license can be granted as Marley’s representatives have other contractual obligations,” Bohemian wrote in a statement. “That’s why we can’t use the shirt with the picture of Bob Marley.”
The shirt that Bohemian launched (left) and the shirt that Bohemian eventually adopted (right).
The people who had already ordered the shirt were given three options from Bohemian: get the full amount back, a credit for the fan shop or the new shirt. In the end, the shirt was largely kept the same, so with the green, yellow and red accents. However, the image of Marley was replaced by a clenched fist, which symbolized solidarity and support. Bohemian eventually played in that shirt in 2019 – in Ireland the football seasons run over the calendar year.
The big difference with Ajax is that the team from Amsterdam has not given the image of Marley a place on the shirt. The Telegraph wrote that they had been working on the design of the shirt for years. It is a black shirt, with red, green and yellow accents on the sleeves and around the collar. The colors also appear on the back of the shirt. “I am deeply moved that Ajax Three Little Birds has embraced it as a song of its own,” daughter Cedella Marley told Ajax’s website. “Stories like this touch my heart and show how powerful songs can be. Football was everything to my father. In his words, football is freedom.”