Great one-offs – Roma third kit, 1991-92

In a Midweek Mashup last year, we featured the kit Monaco had had to wear against Feyenoord in the 1991-92 European Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final. In the previous round though, Monaco had been the cause of another side having to come up with an emergency third kit.

Apart from a few occasions in the 1960s and 1970s, AS Roma have had dark red home kits and white away strips, and neither was deemed suitable when they went to Stade Louis II on March 18, 1992 (incidentally, the practice in European competition nowadays  seems to be to ask the home team to change – Arsenal wore yellow against Basel in 2016 and will apparently have to wear blue when they entertain Östersunds next month).

While a yellow/gold/orange (Roma’s shades do tend to vary) third kit might have seemed logical, instead adidas came up with a navy strip which incorporated the club’s colours.

Something of a hybrid, it featured the old adidas trefoil logo and three stripes down the sleeves, as well as the three-bar style on the sleeeves, which would be seen on Arsenal and Germany kits launched the following summer. Unlike those kits, which had the adidas Equipment branding, the bars were also on the right leg of the shorts.

Unfortunately for Roma, the kit was not a good luck charm as Monaco won 1-0. According to the excellent Roma kits book, La maglia che ci unisce, the navy kit was popular with fans (it’s unclear if replicas were actually sold) but the shirt wasn’t worn again for superstitious reasons.