Some self-indulgence this week as, rather than dealing with the many fine requests in the inbox, I’ve reacted to the news that Italy will wear adidas kits from 2023 on.
The really obvious one was done in the infancy of FKF…
…but obviously the possibilities are almost endless. For no reason at all, the years I landed on were 1986, 2006 and 2021.
The 1986 shirt uses an adidas design known as Chelsea, which had alternating diagonal pinstripes – some artistic licence is taken in that green, white and red are combined, but there is at least a fidelity to history with the absence of a maker’s logo, though of course the three stripes made it clear who’s doing the producing.
There is of course every chance that, if Italy did have adidas at the time, the striping would have been a France-like white-green-white-red-white – their national rugby team had that in the 1980s – but that might have been overkill given the diagonals, even if the green is somewhat hard to discern.
By 2006, the FIGC had relented and allowed manufacturers’ logos on their kit (Euro 2000 was the first tournament where one appeared) and shirt designs tended to feature quite a lot of panels. The adidas Teamgeist family had a number of variants but this version of the style known as United works fairly well.
Germany were one of the countries to use that and it is their 2021 change strip which provides the inspiration for the last of the three here, a ‘blue-out’ shirt with patriotic cuffs, though a ghosted crest would have been a step too far on a home kit, I feel. Thanks to Lou Mac, who made the initial suggestion during Euro 2020.
Feedback is welcome, along with future FKF requests – comment below or tweet @museumofjerseys.
Loved the 80s adidas Italy rugby kits and all your designs are both obvious and brilliant.