There’s a new episode of The Football Kit Podcast, where your humble correspondent and Les Motherby of Hull City Kits chat with Steve Appenowitz about his new book, Das Gladbach Trikot.
In addition – and fittingly, given that Chelsea travel to face West Ham United today – the mashup feature in the episode regards a curiosity in the Blues’ first season with adidas, 2006-07.
The home was obviously blue shirts, blue shorts and white socks and we’re guessing that the notional default away was the opposite, though that combination didn’t appear in a first-team game. All-white was used in the Champions League at Barcelona while change blue shorts appeared with both white and blue socks.
You might think that those blue shorts were the default home set, but in fact they were blue versions of the white set.
The entire adidas range was known as the Teamgeist but there were at least three distinct templates and further variations within each one of those.
Thanks to Jack Henderson, we know that the home kit was based on the United design and the away was the Aquila, with each having a separate shorts construction, and Chelsea had blue and white versions of each.
Whether it was a mix-up due to the similarities or a conscious decision made for other reasons, Chelsea’s trip to Upton Park to face West Ham in March saw them wearing the home shorts with the white shirts.
In 2007-08, they had a new white third strip – worn just twice – and the blue home shorts appeared with that in one of the outings, again at West Ham.
