- Thanks, as ever, the oracle on Wales kits, Simon Shakeshaft, for his expertise
In his latest post on Kitted Off, looking at Manchester City mashups, Daniel Gellatley includes their 2015-16 visit to Everton, when the previous season’s home shorts were used as an alternative set. In 2016 and 2017, Wales did something similar but with some alterations.
In 2013, the FAW signed a deal with adidas, 26 years after the country had last worn the three stripes. Because of the short turnaround time, the first set of kits were teamwear but at the end of 2014, the new home strip featured all three national colours, albeit with the green of a lime shade.
These were heady times for Wales, with Chris Coleman’s side qualifying for the 2016 European Championship. For that tournament, they were in a new home kit, with the green trim gone and white shorts the first-choice option.
Wales’s second game at the Euros was against England, whose Nike Vapor strip also featured white shorts and red socks, but as there were no change options available to Wales, they wore their black and grey change kit instead. That 2-1 defeat and the semi-final loss were two of five games played in the away strip, with no victories accruing.
In their third group game, against Russia, Wales were the ‘away’ team but successfully persuaded Russia to change so they could wear red. The darkness of Portugal’s shade meant that both teams changed in the semi-final, but Wales had suggested unsuccessfully that they might play in their home kit. Such was the sentiment against the grey kit that Wales came up with a one-off yellow third against Moldova in 2017.
In between, they came up with a home-made solution for games where shorts-clashes arose and the change kit could be avoided, these being at home to Georgia in September 2016 and away to the Republic of Ireland in March 2017. With some of the previous home shorts still available, kitman Dai Griffiths suggested using them, but replacing the green adidas stripes with white ones.
While we continue to illustrate kits with shirts tucked in, in practice players tend to wear them outside the shorts now, meaning that the green strip below the waistband was concealed and only the adidas logo was incongruous – had it been white like on the 2014 home shirt, the handiwork wouldn’t have stood out at all.
Wales’s next home kit after that would see a return to all-red, though white change socks were available and were worn against France in November 2017 while the red shorts and socks appeared with the white and green change shirt against Albania a year later.
