A very recent example this week, looking at Belgium’s outfit against Estonia last Friday night.
Traditionally, Belgium wear all-red, but their new kit launched for Euro 2016 featured black shorts – similar to Euro 80, when yellow socks were worn.
While change kits were tradtionally white, for 2016 adidas went with light blue, paying tribute to the Belgium national cycling team shirt. This deviation plays a part in the focus of this week’s mashup.
Estonia have blue shirts with black shorts, meaning that Belgium couldn’t wear their normal outfit. In times past, they might have worn a white away kit, but obviously blue couldn’t be worn, as this wasn’t the Premier League.
A change of shorts was the solution, but instead of the expected red, instead they opted for yellow, creating a look not worn by the country before.
The unorthodox mix didn’t affect their play as they recorded a 2-0 win in Tallinn, though it’s unlikely that it will be seen again.
It looked pretty awful in all honesty – looking at the shorts, there’s a hit on white between the adidas stripes and the shorts hem trim, which makes me think these are shorts normally used on the fluoresent yellow goalkeeper kit.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/06/09/21/414A7B7100000578-0-image-a-22_1497038622573.jpg
Given that Belgium are one of adidas’ bespoke contracts and do have alternate light blue shorts available for the away kit (as worn, unnecessarily, against Hungary in Euro 2016), you’d have thought they’d have had an alternative red pair with yellow stripes?