Three kits for you today, with a bumper Manchester City FKF coming next week.
First up, Andrew Rockall with an re-colouring suggestion. In 1985, Denmark had a white change kit which was worn on a few occasions, essentially in the same design as the Tottenham Hotspur home strip from that time.
The Danes’ home remained unaltered from that seen at Euro 84, but Andrew wondered what a red version would have looked like.
The second one is also a recolouring, courtesy of Jay from Design Football, as he explains:
During 2018-19, Bayern Munich underwent a kit change. As previously documented on this website, the first choice navy home shorts have been replaced by the red change pair, at the apparent behest of the clubs’ supporters, accompanied with a pledge that blue shorts of any kind will not be returning for any Bayern home kits in the foreseeable future.
As I say, the reasons for the blue hate can be found in these pages, but could it have been very, very different? In 1987, Bayern played Porto in the European Cup final. They’d fought hard to reach the decider – Lothar Matthäus being particularly in the wars against Real Madrid in the semi – but they fell short. Porto won their first big-eared trophy, beating a very – to our modern eyes – oddly-attired Bayern 2-1 in Vienna.
For reasons also explained herein, Bayern wore a mashup of red home shirt, red home socks and blue and yellow shorts from a once-worn Brazil-styled change kit, which, under Udo Lattek, had become go-to change shorts in as official a capacity as things could be in the late 1980s. The game was lost, Lattek departed, and the shorts could finally enjoy a well-earned retirement.
But how would Bayern fans today feel about blue shorts had Bayern won the European Cup in 1987? The Butterfly Effect and The Simpons’ ‘Treehouse of Horror V’ both demonstrated how things can go haywire when you change history, but we’ll use a little artistic licence and say everything else stayed the same.
Not only could Bayern fans have embraced the blue shorts, but in 2016-17, Bayern could have found themselves in a tribute kit to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the triumph – in the season of victory, not merely, and temporarily, the year, as it should always be.
It’d be a subtle change, but the 2016 shirt could rotate the horizontally-ribbed effect 45 degrees to nod to the inspirational version’s diagonal jacquard shadow pattern – seen again on Sweden’s kit for the last World Cup – keep the side-of-torso stripes, but change them to white-yellow-white, and repeat on the newly light blue shorts for continuity. A kit which looks back whilst not jarring as much as the doomed muse. What could have been.
Jay also had another request which was a lot more radical – that of an Ajax kit using the the 1991-92 Luton Town design.
Ajax did actually have Umbro at the time but in a more sedate style – so traditional were the club that there was a backlash against having the adidas stripes on the kit during the early 2000s.
Your feedback is welcome, of course – leave a comment below or tweet us @museumofjerseys.
Would be great to see that Ajax shirt as real. Fantastic.
The Danish shirt is a thing of beauty!