Season in Kits – Valencia, 2019-20

In 2019, Valencia bridged a gap of 26 years as they entered into a deal with Puma, who had last produced their kit in 1993.

While the club’s last adidas change kit was red and yellow striped with blue shorts, derived from the club crest, but Puma opted for black and orange as the second-choice kit while the third was a blue offering, intended to reference a shirt from the 1990s. After the start of the season, Škoda were added as shorts sponsors, though they were not present for the third kit’s only outing to date, away to Athletic Bilbao.

In Valencia’s other domestic outings, the home and away kits have appeared in their default formats, but their Champions League group provided the opportunity for mixing and matching, with each of their three away games seeing a change.

At Chelsea in the first group game, the away socks were worn to avoid a clash with the hosts’ white; then at Lille (red shirt, navy shorts and socks), they used the orange shorts with the white shirts and socks. This look was seen again in the last 16 of the competition away to Atalanta.

The final group match, at Ajax, saw the black shirts called upon and the home shorts were worn, presumably to remove any confusion between the orange and the red of Ajax. As with the Lille game, it meant that the shorts and shorts had the club crest configured differently. With betting advertising banned in the Netherlands, the bwin logo was absent.

Then, in January, Valencia were away to Logroñés in their opening Copa del Rey game. With the hosts in red and white striped shirts, black shorts and black socks, Valencia had to wear the black jerseys but a sock-change was needed.

Rather than simply using the home set though, they appeared in special orange alternative socks.

One other combination we would like to see at some stage is white shirts, orange shorts and black socks, but it’s hard to think of an opponent that would allow for Valencia to wear such a look. We shall see.