- Thanks once again to Dirk Maas for his assistance
A real oddity this one – a change shirt worn when the team had two other alternatives, as well as an absent sponsor.
In 1982-83, Ajax had a sky blue kit as well as a white shirt with horizontal red pinstripes. Obviously, the latter couldn’t be used when they went to Celtic in the first round of the European Cup on September 15, but one would have thought that the blue would suffice.
They did wear blue, but in a royal shade, in the same design as the white shirt, with the pairs of horizontal stripes.
Perhaps it was an attempt to spook the Bhoys by wearing Rangers’ colours – like Southampton against Everton a few years later – but the absence of TDK’s logo is an added inexplicable layer to the whole situation. The logo had been seen on the home kit in Amsterdam, but it seems that it contravened Uefa rules.
The sides drew 2-2 and two weeks later in Amsterdam, Celtic – wearing green shirts with white pinstripes, proving that an away kit in the same colours as a home can be functional – won 2-1 to advance, and Ajax didn’t wear the blue shirts again.
Incidentally, Celtic defender David Moyes has an Ajax number 14 shirt from the second leg – but it’s not from the source you might expect.
