Fit & Sizing
A letter on a label is not a measurement. S, M and L mean different things between manufacturers, between fits, and sometimes between two shirts in the same range — which is why the most reliable way to order the right size is to measure a shirt you already like wearing and compare it against the chart for the jersey you want.
Take a shirt that already fits you the way you want, lay it flat, and measure it. Then compare those figures with the published chart for the jersey you are about to order. That comparison tells you something a letter size cannot: how this particular garment will sit on you relative to one you already know.
There is one trap, and it accounts for most wrong orders. A chart that lists a chest size is usually describing a body — the distance around your chest. A tape laid across a jersey lying flat is describing half a garment. Those are different quantities, and comparing one with the other will send you a size or two away from where you wanted to be. The rest of this article is mostly about keeping them apart.
FootVerse publishes chest and length in inches, and the chest figure is a body measurement — taken around the fullest part of your chest. Sleeve length is not published, so a sleeve comparison has to be made against a shirt you already own.
If you have no tape, a piece of string and any ruler will do: mark the string, then measure the marked length. It is less convenient and no less accurate.
Lay the shirt face up and smooth it with your palms until there are no ripples. Do not pull it — you are measuring the garment at rest, and a shirt stretched even slightly under your hands will read larger than the one that arrives. Keep the tape flat against the fabric rather than arcing over it.
Take each measurement twice. If the two readings disagree, the garment moved between them — smooth it out and take a third.
Find the point where the sleeve seam meets the body seam under one arm. That is your starting point. Run the tape straight across the chest to the matching point under the other arm, and stop there. That single figure is the flat chest width, usually called pit to pit.
Two things make this go wrong. The first is letting the tape drift upwards into the chest print or downwards towards the waist instead of running square across — the line should be perpendicular to the shirt's centre, not diagonal. The second is starting at the shoulder rather than the underarm, which measures something else entirely.
Pit to pit is half the garment's circumference, because the shirt is folded flat with a front and a back. It is not a chest size, and it is not meant to be compared with one directly.
Start at the highest point of the shoulder — where the shoulder seam meets the collar, at the top of the garment — and measure straight down to the bottom hem. Keep the tape vertical and parallel to the side seam rather than following the body's curve.
This is the measurement people skip, and it is often the one that decides whether a jersey feels right. Two shirts can share a chest width and differ by a couple of inches in length, which is the difference between a shirt that sits on the hip and one that does not stay tucked.
Measure the back if the hem is cut longer at the back than the front, and note which one you measured. A drop hem is a design choice, not an error, but comparing a front length against a back length will mislead you.
Measure from the shoulder seam — where the sleeve is attached to the body — along the outside of the sleeve to its hem. For a short sleeve that is a short measurement; for a full sleeve, follow the sleeve's own line rather than pulling the tape straight.
There is a second convention, used mainly for formal shirts, that measures from the centre back of the collar across the shoulder and down the arm. It produces a much larger number. Both are legitimate; they are not interchangeable, so check which one a chart means before comparing anything to it.
FootVerse does not publish a sleeve measurement, so there is no figure to compare yours against. Measuring the sleeve on a shirt you already own is still worth doing — it tells you what you are used to, which is what you will notice if the new one differs.
On a shirt with a conventional set-in sleeve, the shoulder seam sits roughly where your shoulder ends, and measuring from one seam to the other across the back is meaningful. Lay the shirt face down and measure the straight line between the two points where the seams meet the sleeves.
On a raglan sleeve, where the seam runs diagonally from the underarm up to the collar, there is no shoulder seam to measure between and the figure means very little. Check how the sleeve is attached before bothering: if the seam does not cross the top of the shoulder, skip this measurement rather than inventing a reading for it.
This is the section worth reading twice, because four different numbers get called "chest" and only two of them are ever comparable.
So doubling your pit-to-pit reading converts a garment half-measurement into an approximate garment circumference — approximate because it assumes the back is cut to the same width as the front. What it does not do, under any circumstances, is turn it into a body measurement. A shirt has to be bigger around than the person inside it, or there would be no room to move — that difference is the garment's ease, it varies with how the shirt is cut, and it is not something a tape laid on a shirt can tell you.
Which means a doubled flat width is the right thing to compare against another garment's circumference, and the wrong thing to compare against a body chest chart. FootVerse's published chest figures are body measurements, so the reliable comparison is garment against garment: measure the shirt you like, measure or look up the shirt you want, and compare like with like.
A useful sanity check: if a figure is smaller than your own chest measurement, it is almost certainly a flat width rather than a circumference. Shirts are not made narrower than their wearers.
Two things decide how a shirt wears that a tape cannot tell you: which version it is, and how its decoration is applied. Both are separate questions from measuring, and we cover them properly rather than in passing here.
Keep the note. Measuring one shirt carefully is a job you only need to do once, and the figures stay useful for every order after this one.
A shirt, if you have one that fits you well — it removes the guesswork about how much room a garment needs. Measure yourself when you have nothing comparable to hand, and then compare your chest measurement against a body chest chart rather than against a flat garment width.
Double it when you want the garment's approximate circumference, which is the right figure to compare against another garment's circumference. Do not double it and compare the result against a body chest chart: the shirt is necessarily larger around than the person wearing it, and that difference is not something you can infer from a tape.
Let length decide. Compare the body length of both candidates against the shirt you already wear — the match is usually the size you will be happiest with. If length is identical, think about how you prefer a shirt to sit rather than about the number.
Because the chart is describing chests and the tape is describing half a shirt. A chart listing a chest in the forties, against a shirt whose tape reading is around half that, is not a contradiction — the two numbers are measuring different things, and neither one converts into the other.
Not a published one — FootVerse lists chest and length, and says plainly that sleeve length is not among them. Measuring your own shirt's sleeve is still worthwhile, because it tells you what you are accustomed to.
Any garment can change slightly with washing, and how much depends on the fabric and how it is treated. That is a reason to follow the care instructions on the garment rather than a reason to order a size up, and it is why a shirt washed many times is not the best one to measure.
Across the chest, rarely — garments are sewn, not machined, and small variation between two of the same size is normal. In length it is more noticeable, because that is where you see the difference rather than feel it.
FootVerse is an India-focused online retailer of football jerseys and sportswear. We publish The Football Journal because the questions we are asked most often — which size, which cut, how to look after it — deserve a fuller answer than a product page can give.
This article is written to be useful with any jersey, from anywhere. There is nothing to buy in it, and no reason to read it other than getting the measurement right.