Lookalikes, no. 4 – Romania and Barcelona

• See here for previous entries in this series

Meyba were many things, but innovative was not one of them – unless we count small pockets on the front of players’ shorts.

The Catalan firm produced Barcelona’s kits throughout the 1980s and up until the club joined forces with Kappa in 1992, but for much of their tenure things were quite sedate.

The Barça home strip kept the same design for most of the 1980s, while the change kits utilised different base colours but retained the same dual-stripe motif.

In 1989, a change came as the home strip gained narrow shadow stripes (and lost the shorts pocket), while for 1991-92, the club’s last in the kit of the local supplier, there was a relatively big departure on the away-shirt front.

We have read elsewhere that the orange kit was a tribute of sorts to Barça’s then-manager, club legend Johan Cruyff and if it was seeking to harness some gold-dust from his European Cup wins with Ajax in the early 1970s, it worked.

The club claimed the continental title for the first time as Sampdoria were beaten at Wembley in a final that went to extra time, with another Dutchman, centre-back Ronald Koeman, scoring the winner from a free kick.

Unfortunately for the orange shirts, they were denied some glory as Barça’s players put on a set of home jerseys for the presentation of the cup. While they were unlike anything Meyba had produced previously, the design itself wasn’t completely unique.

At the previous year’s World Cup, Romania (and the USA) had played in an adidas design which had more than a few similarities, construction-wise, to what Meyba would come up with. Incidentally, they were the only country at Italia 90 not to have a crest, with the previous one having to be jettisoned after the fall of communism. It would be 1993 before a new badge appeared.

A Barça shirt with the exact same layout as Romania’s would have worked from a historical point of view, but Meyba did at least mix things with the use of orange and the inclusion of the same trim as was on the sleeves of their previous kits. The company’s logo was repeated through the fabric, as well.

It would go down in the Barcelona annals due to its associations with the 1992 final, the perfect swansong before the end of their long association with the club.