Great one-offs – Roma, 2002

One of the first instalments in this series was a navy Roma third kit worn against Monaco in 1991-92. That was a strip born out of necessity, but this example is towards the other end of the one-off scale.

The giallorossi’s domestic kits for 2002-03 were in keeping with the previous couple of seasons under Kappa, albeit with black replacing navy as the colour of the third shirt. There was also a yellow fourth shirt but it was unworn outfield, only used by the club’s goalkeepers.

In 2001-02, Roma had marked their return to the Champions League with a halved shirt and they decided to retain the philosophy of a European home shirt for 2002-03, with contrasting sleeves and black shorts differentiating it from the domestic first kit.

That was worn in their opening game of the first group stage, a 3-0 defeat at home to Real Madrid, and then they used their first away match, against AEK Athens, to premiere the change kit that was reserved solely for European games.

Ordinarily, Roma wouldn’t need to change against the yellow-and-black-clad Greek side, but presumably the sleeves of the European home necessitated it.

Following the same design as its league counterpart, the collar and sleeves were grey while there was extra red piping. The scoreless draw in Athens proved to be its only outing though as the other two sides in the group, Genk of Belgium and Real Madrid, wore white when Roma visited, with a 1-0 triumph at the Bernabéu helping them to progress to the second group stage.

There, they were drawn with Ajax, Arsenal and Valencia and, while the default Euro home couldn’t be used in any of the three away games, the white strip remained in the kit room. With Arsenal and Ajax both having large amounts of white, the black third kit was worn when Roma went to London and Amsterdam, while the trip to Spain saw the white shorts and change home red socks called upon.