Fantasy Kit Friday – the (delayed) return, Marseille adidas 2018-21

Keen students of the Gregorian calendar will note that today is Saturday and apologies, this was meant to be posted yesterday but time ran out. Nevertheless, as it’s been a while since we had an FKF, we hope you’ll forgive us.

A popular series within the series has been Simon Treanor’s look at how Liverpool could have looked in adidas during the periods where they were clad by other manufacturers and a 2021-22 version of that is on the way soon. Today’s post is in a similar vein, as Jay from Design Football imagines six Olympique de Marseille adidas strips since the club switched to Puma in 2018.

Without withing to sound melodramatic, Marseille could scarcely have picked a worse time to switch from one Herzogenrauch company to the other, as 2018 saw adidas reinterpret classic designs from its back catalogue. Jay has used two strips from that year’s World Cup as the basis for 2018-19 Marseille home and away kits – Germany and Mexico, respectively.

Next season will be the 30th anniversary of Marseille becoming the first, and so far only, French club to win the European Cup/Champions League and it’s probably too much to hope that Puma would do a kit that references the boldness of the adidas Equipment era.

In 2020-21, adidas themselves did a modern reworking of it but the striping was too large for strict branding rules on this side of the Atlantic. However, the large neck style of the Condivo 20 was unmistakably leaning on the early 90s and the insertion of the tricolore trim that l’OM had at the time to denote their status as French champions is a strong nod to that. While their change kit back then generally had a non-contrasting neck, there was a twice-worn variation with a white neck.

For the current season, Jay opted for the Celtic third kit as the basis for a Marseille home, while the 2007-08 third kit colours are recalled for a change strip that uses a style Celta Vigo have for their away.

Those six kits cover three of the four seasons since Marseille eschewed the three stripes for the leaping cat and, just to square the circle, we have added a 2019-20 change strip. While the design of that year’s Colombia kit was a bespoke creation for them, honouring traditional patterns seen on hats and skirts, it was later recycled by Feyenoord and works well as ‘just a design’, especially in the black that l’OM often use.

As always, feedback is welcome, along with requests for future Fantasy Kit Friday posts – we’re aiming to get it back to a weekly routine. Comment below or tweet @museumofjerseys.