This one could be divisive – or just plain unpopular.
The 1995-97 Newcastle United adidas shirt – the first made by the German company – is held in very high regard – voted the eighth-best ever a few years ago, for instance. We like it but feel there is an element of The Emperor’s New Clothes about it and rate its Asics predecessor just as highly.
Craig Stoddart is of an even stronger view, as he outlines:
Newcastle United’s adidas home kit from 1995-97 is hugely overrated.
There, I’ve said it. Sacrilege, I know, among kit aficionados to say such a thing, but it’s the truth.
And what’s more, it was not as good as the kit it replaced, the Asics strip used for two seasons from 1993, before adidas became their suppliers and gave them the aforementioned grandad-collared shirts.
Looking back, I would like to have seen adidas give Newcastle the template they used for Bayern Munich (and later Crystal Palace). Over to you, Denis…
A fairly straightforward brief, though still with some decisions to be made. Craig went for a black collar, like the 1993-95 shirt, and we moved the adidas wordmark from its central position on the Bayern shirt to the right breast, where Palace had it.
Bayern and Palace had the three adidas stripes in white but doing them in blue on this wouldn’t have looked great so we went for white trimmed in blue and the same on the socks – white socks like Bayern might have looked nice, but maybe not Newcastle enough (though Ruud Gullit did try to bring about such a change a few years later).
Better than the original, or a complete affront? Let us know…
