Why did captains start wearing armbands? It depends who you ask

There are three theories that explain how the armband arrived in British football and they are all partly true

By Tom Nicholson for The Blizzard

There is something missing from the picture. Bobby Moore beams as he waves the Jules Rimet trophy, just as he always has done. Geoff Hurst and a grimacing Ray Wilson carry Moore aloft. Exhausted, George Cohen drapes an arm over Bobby Charlton’s shoulder. But one thing’s off: Moore isn’t wearing a captain’s armband.

It doesn’t look strange until you realise it’s not there, but once you have it’s hard to shake. A captain without an armband feels unofficial, somehow, robbed of some muscular nobility. To pull on the captain’s armband is publicly to take responsibility for both what happens on the pitch and become a focus for the nebulous ideas – values, history, hopes, fears – which a team and its fans gather off the pitch. The thing is, nobody seems to know for sure when and where they came from, even the governing bodies.

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from Football | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/dec/21/why-did-captains-start-wearing-armbands-depends-football