'I designed football shirts for World cup winners'

What started as drawing over highlighted pictures of football comic book icon Roy of the Rovers as a boy has led to a man's stellar career designing the kit for World Cup winners.

Rob Warner from Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, designed Italy's royal blue kit in which they lifted the trophy in 2006.

While working for Puma and Umbro, he said he oversaw the design of the all-in-one Cameroon kit worn in 2004, designed the last ever Umbro England kit, and also Usain Bolt's kit for his record-breaking runs in Beijing in 2008.

He said his footballing highlight was Italy, because of the win and also "how many people can say their product was head-butted by Zidane".

Warner said he and his team wanted to "create a characteristic that represented Italy".

The kit was a deep, royal blue with navy gradient panels on the side and gold player numbers.

"The Italian people see the football team as their superheroes," he said.

"The intention with that was that in a still photograph it would almost look a comic book superhero with the colour blurring away from the body of the hero wearing the outfit."

Warner's designing began by "drawing over Tippexed-out images of Roy of the Rovers" - the legendary football comic book character.

He put on a charity catwalk fashion show for Barnardo's while at school and went on to work with a Birmingham fashion designer in the Jewellery Quarter.

After graduating in fashion design from Manchester Metropolitan University, he went to work for Puma in Germany for six years where he designed all the Puma kits for the 2006 World Cup tournament, as well as for winners Italy and clothing for Ferrari's Formula One team.

"That was a bit of fun," he said.

As creative director for Umbro, he said he designed the the last Umbro England kit "which was, at the time, the controversial white and red one".

He has since set up a design academy that sells courses for would-be designers, with more than 600 people signed up in over 50 countries.

But what would his favourite World Cup kit be?

"I think West Germany 1990 is most people's favourite," he said.

"[It] just had a little bit more subtlety - it was a bit more refined and really spoke to a Germany that was changing from West Germany to being a united country."

In this summer's tournament, he said he loved the Curacao away kit - which might not even be used - with its bright, pastel stripes. He admitted being biased, as a former student of his who now worked for Adidas designed it.

"Obviously I'm biased a little bit in saying that away kit is my favourite, but it really is my favourite of the tournament," he said.

"I just like how restrained he was with designing that. He could have gone really wild."