Fantasy Kit Friday – Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur, 1980

Friend of the site Lee Hermitage has in the past been a good source of information and ideas, so when he came with an FKF idea, it was a pleasure to acquiesce.

Lee said:

Arguably the two biggest clubs hit by Admiral’s collapse in 1980 were Manchester United and Tottenham. As we know, United went to adidas while Spurs went to Le Coq, but what if it had been the other way around?

An interesting brief, taking four fairly recognisable kits and mixing up the colourways.

The Manchester United LCS home shirt has echoes of the classic 1950s look:

Perhaps a case could be made that the shoulder panels of the Spurs away should be black on a United version, but Lee specified red and it helps to tie the whole look together better, in my view.

We’ve had Tottenham in 80s adidas before, and white and navy look good together in almost all cases.

The United away when they changed to adidas was unique in that it had the German company’s three stripes up the side of the shirt and down the inside arms. Nobody else had it at the time, as far as we know – there were a couple of examples of it in the 1970s –  and it would be 36 years before adidas resurrected it.

It looks well in Spurs’ traditional yellow and navy change colours.