The evolution of adidas goalkeeper shirt designs – Part 12

• To catch up on previous instalments – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11

The closing weeks of the 1998-99 English season saw the unveiling of two adidas goalkeeper kits for the following campaign.

Tottenham Hotspur had signed a deal with adidas to commence in 1999-200 and in their final home game, against Chelsea, they showed off their new kits. The goalkeeper shirt was dark grey with a burnt orange pattern.

Newcastle United reached the FA Cup final for the second straight season and premiered their new kit, though it didn’t bring them luck as Manchester United completed the second part of the treble. Steve Harper, given the nod over Shay Given, was in a blue shirt that complemented the outfield offering.

The two clubs’ other goalkeeper shirts were in the same design. Though the dark red Newcastle top had the ‘home’ Newcastle Brown Ales logo, the blue – with the circular logo – was worn more often.

While nobody else had the shape which appeared on the grey Tottenham shirt, the collar design also appeared on a shirt style which had a pleasing two-tone swirling stripe. Feyenoord’s Jerzy Dudek had it in grey, while Aleksandar Kocić wore a black, silver and yellow version and Fabien Barthez appeared in his customary all-black.

Another design seen in 1999-2000 was primarily favoured by German sides – Schalke and Stuttgart are shown here and while it was available to Bayern Munich, Oliver Kahn continued to prefer the hooped designs seen in Part 1.

Meanwhile, Milan’s Christian Abbiati was most regularly seen in a yellow shirt which wasn’t far off the blue Newcastle one.

The next design leap would come with adidas’s offerings for Euro 2000. The most common shirt featured a slightly mis-shapen crew neck with panels emanating from that down to the armpits.

Against England, Germany’s Oliver Kahn wore blue with mismatching shorts in a different shade, while Ivica Kralj, who had displaced Aleksandar Kocić in the Yugoslavia goal, wore two different versions.

Spain also had effectively the same design in yellow, but with a different collar.

At club level, AC Milan had five versions of that design available. Unsurprisingly, the black and red shirts didn’t see much usage while in 2001-02, Christian Abbiati – who had switched from number 12 to 18 – had matching shorts for the grey shirts.

Back to Euro 2000 and there were other new designs. Kralj made it three different shirts with a red shirt that had black side panels and sleeves. This was also worn by Romania’s Bogdan Stelea and a black/grey version was later used by Ajax.

However, that wasn’t the only red shirt that Stelea wore. Against England, he used a different design which featured a wave-like pattern which saw the colour darken. France’s Fabien Barthez had a similar one in which black changed to silver – and, given his preference for short sleeves, it had the adidas stripes in the shoulder panel. Domestically in France, a two-tone grey style was worn by Marseille.

Just as Romania had two red goalkeeper shirts at the tournament, France had two which were primarily black. Against the Netherlands, Bernard Lama was seen in one which wasn’t a million miles from his Euro 96 design, albeit with curtailed sets of three stripes.

However, this one doesn’t seem to have been given to any, or many, of adidas’s club contracts for 2000-01. Instead, there was a design not used at Euro 2000, worn by Newcastle United, Real Madrid and Schalke, the latter reminiscent of Puma and Nike shirts from the previous season.

Meanwhile, Bayern and Kahn had two new kits, orange and blue, both accompanied by navy.

And we finish back where we started, with Tottenham Hotspur. While the dark grey remained as the first choice for 2000-01, their new navy away kit was accompanied with an orange goalkeeper shirt and, again, it was a style not replicated by any other team.